


Hunter and Hunter

by ezpzlemon



Series: Killugon Collection [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Butterfly Effect, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Dark fic, Drunk Sex, F/M, M/M, Nen (Hunter X Hunter), Pining, Psycho Gon, Sleep-deprived Kite, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 58,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezpzlemon/pseuds/ezpzlemon
Summary: Instead of Pitou, Shaiapouf is the first Royal Guard to be born.Instead of Kite, Killua is the one who’s left behind.Instead of breaking, Gon——snaps.(Updates every Saturday except for when it doesn't, lol)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spinner (Spin) is the redhead girl who was part of Kite's group, in case you don't remember. I know I sure as hell didn't when I started writing this

All things considered, Rammot recovered rather gracefully. Sure, he was trembling in his figurative boots, but his crushed dreams did not crush  _him_ , per se. No, there was only one thing about him that was truly changed, one fundamental definition:

_I am strong._

And from there, only one thing was truly lost:

_There is hope for me._

And then, only one thing was truly gained:

_I can be happy in servitude._

Shaiapouf inspected his left hand—counting all five of the long, slender fingers—and chose his first words to be, “How curious.”

“Huh…?”

“That you’re only realizing this now.”

Rammot raised his head as an expression of confusion, Pouf easily surmised, and his own thoughts began to sour; what a useless ability he must have, if all it did was reveal what was already plain to see.

“M-my Lord?”

“Your existence has always been one of servitude,” Pouf elaborated. “To diverge from this purpose would make you no better than the creatures you collect for the Queen—which, as you know, have no use but for their meat.”

“Y-y-yes, that’s true,” Rammot breathed. “Yes, I understand. I live for the King!”

With a single, elegant flick of his wrist, Pouf decapitated the subordinate ant, catching the head by its long, rabbit-like ears in his other hand. The body fell forward to the ground, thankfully aiming the spray of blood out of Pouf’s way. “And you die for Him, too.”

To his credit, Peggy did not rush to the body’s side, though every muscle in his body did tense up with horror. All he could think of was,  _why?_

“He thought he could become King,” Pouf said as he shook the blood from his fingers. “Besides that, he had an… aura, as you called it. So even without his insolence, he’s more useful dead than alive; I’m sure he’ll repay us in full with his nutritional value.”

“Y-you can’t mean… to feed him to the Queen!”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Pouf confirmed. “You should do so before I decide the same for you.”

Peggy’s thoughts were scattered, panicky flecks of disbelief, conflicted only when his outrage and instinct for self-preservation collided. No regard for the King at all, Pouf disdainfully observed. He dropped the head to the ground with a squishy thud, and Peggy flinched at the sound.

“By the way, why is there a human hiding underneath that pile of bones?”

 

* * *

 

“ _This_ is the nest?” Gon breathlessly wondered. “It’s huge!”

Indeed it was; the brown, lumpy walls peaked as high as any conventional skyscraper and stretched as wide as several suburban neighborhoods. Crouching before it in the forest brush, the irony of “feeling like an ant” was not lost on Kite. He didn’t doubt that it had an equally massive underground complex, as well. Finding the Queen was going to be harder than he’d thought.

“Before we go in, I need to make a few things clear,” Kite said, watching the two boys straighten their backs in attention. “First and foremost, our goal is to kill the Queen. If we raise any commotion, we’ll be swarmed by ants with no easy escape route, and I don’t know if I can kill them fast enough to keep us from being overwhelmed. So we should use do our best to avoid detection and engage in no fights; the smell of blood will surely attract more to the scene, if nothing else. And if we do have to fight, we kill as efficiently as we can and move on immediately. Use Zetsu at all times, hug the walls, and stay behind me. Chimera ant queens have been documented to hole up underneath their nests, so we’ll look for underground tunnels, first.”

They nodded eagerly, wholly undeterred, but this only filled Kite with a more insistent feeling of dread. The nest was eerily silent as it loomed ahead; Ging’s advice echoed through his mind, _trust your instincts_.

But there was no reason to run, yet. Nothing yet that he couldn’t easily handle. And with every second delayed, more innocents were needlessly slaughtered.

“I need you to promise me, once more,” Kite slowly began, “that you’ll leave me behind if something goes wrong.”

They both stiffened, but it was Killua who looked to Gon for an answer, strangely enough.

“We can’t know how we would react in that scenario,” Gon told him. “So any promise we make will mean nothing.”

“Yeah,” Killua agreed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Kite knew he should send them back. Tell them that, if that was the case, he couldn’t bring them along. But the fact of the matter was that he really, really didn’t know if he could handle this on his own. It was the reason he’d let them tag along in the first place: he needed all the help he could get.

“Well, then,” he sighed. There was nothing to be done about it. “Let’s go.”

They bolted through the nest’s nearest opening, and the stale, putrid smell of decay hit them like a ton of bricks; Gon literally stumbled, hanging on to Killua’s shoulder for support, and Kite held his hat to his nose. Their sight was the next sense under siege when they turned the first corner and the moonlight disappeared. The two boys seemed to have above-average night vision—Killua, especially—but Kite could still pinpoint the exact moment they began to focus on his aura for a sense of direction instead of the path ahead. They walked unusually close to each other, even for two near-blind people, but if that’s what made them comfortable, then who was he to judge? Having En to scout out the area, Kite perceived their surroundings just fine, though he was painfully aware of the risk he took by not activating Zetsu.

Then, Kite stopped in his tracks.

“What is it?” Killua whispered.

“Eight, eleven, twelve…” Kite muttered. “Too many. Over here.”

In a silent burst of speed, he leapt fifteen meters ahead into a crossroads of eight more tunnels. The boys got there a second later only to find the area completely empty, Kite gesturing widely at them from behind the leftmost tunnel’s corner. They darted to his side just as a horde of giant bugs flew into the room and left through a different opening.

“Okay,” Kite whispered when the coast was clear, walking out into the next tunnel. Gon and Killua followed him only for Kite to turn on his heel as soon as he got a few steps in, and then they watched in confusion as he did the same for each of the available eight tunnels. Finally, he stopped before the third and said, “This is the one that goes downhill.”

So they went down that one. And dodged some more bugs. And went down another. Until they found a hole in the floor that dropped down an unknown distance.

“I’ll go down first,” Kite instructed, bending over to scoop up a pebble. “If everything’s alright, I’ll toss up this rock, and if I’m not back after two minutes, I want you to flee NGL and notify the Hunter Association.”

He jumped into the hole before they could open their mouths to argue. Lucky for everyone, there was no trouble at the bottom, so Kite launched the Nen-saturated pebble up through the gap in the ceiling.

And as soon as they all walked into the next area, Kite felt it.

“Run,” he whispered sharply. Gon and Killua only tensed up, not comprehending the situation.

“Run—GET OUT— _GO!”_

But it was already in the room. Its character was mostly anthropomorphic—a testament to the Queen’s largely human diet, a part of Kite sickly noted—with its main deviations being a pair of antennae and two chitinous appendages drooping from its shoulder blades, as far as his En could discern in the darkness. The boys froze when its aura finally caught up with them; the bloodlust was of a meticulous, inhuman vacancy, full of insectoid chittering and clicks, and considering the fact that they’d been in Zetsu, no Ten to shield them whatsoever… Kite was surprised they hadn’t passed out.

_“ WHOOOOAH, YOU’RE IN SOME DEEP SHIT, NOW! LET’S SEE IF YOU FINALLY DIE!”_

And in that moment of _Crazy Slot’s_ indecision, the creature had already closed the gap, zoomed behind them, and took up the roundish hole that comprised the room’s opening.

_“ BRRRRRRRRRRRR—” _

And its wings were already unfurled, illuminating the area with a hypnotic, rainbow glow, and a wash of glitter fell over the air.

_“ **THREE!** ”_

His hand was already was poised to grasp #3, instinctively knowing it would be weapon chosen. Prior to this, he had held it only seven times in his entire life. Ging’s only comment had been that he should get out more often.

Gon and Killua jumped back from both the ant and, inadvertently, the only exit, while Kite stood his ground between them and the beast.

“Intruders,” the thing observed. “Here to ambush the King in His vulnerable state, I assume.”

“ _Huaahh,_ ” Gon moaned before toppling over, and then the first wave of drowsiness crashed over Kite’s mind, shaking the bearings of his consciousness. Killua yelped his name as he leapt to his friend’s side, scrambling to hoist him up onto his back, seemingly unaffected by whatever it was that had overcome Gon and Kite—having a resistance to poison…?

Poison. The glitter. Kite reigned in his En to the span of the room and flared it hard enough to blow the specks away, and his head almost immediately cleared but for a lingering, ominous exhaustion at the back of his mind. Gon was still unconscious, and from the panic on Killua’s face, Kite knew he understood there was no way out; being underground meant that they couldn’t break the walls and expect there to be another room on the other side. Kite decided not to bother telling him to run at the first opportunity.

Pulling the hilt of #3 into striking position, Kite burst into action—

Only for the creature to ignore him completely.

Killua narrowly dodged its pounce, but the thing recalibrated instantly and worked to attack him from behind, where Gon lie defenseless. Kite lunged between them, twirling and jabbing and criss-crossing #3 in a purely offensive motion, but the ant beat its wings to sidestep him entirely—its airborne mobility impossibly precise, considering the shape of its wings—and came at Killua again from above. Kite’s reach was long enough to intercept, however, and he managed to snag its kneecap with the broad side of #3’s tip, throwing it off course.

And then something disturbed the edge of his En—still blazing at an unnatural intensity, the headwinds swirling through the tunnels—and all at once, a pack of soldier ants stormed the room. Kite couldn’t move to address them, as the monster would charge the moment he turned his back; Killua couldn’t even defend himself on account of his hands being occupied with Gon. All he could do dodge, and the others were getting closer, and the only option was for Kite to _end it now._

He had three seconds before the newcomer ants would reach him.

He did not kill the monster in that time.

And he aimed a backwards stab at the first of the ants, spearing it through the mouth, and he roundhouse-kicked the next, transmuting his heel into a blade-like edge that disemboweled it, and he bludgeoned the throat of the next one, and he punched through the heart of the next, and he sliced off the head of another. And that’s when the second wave of drowsiness hit him, augmented by the strain of a Ren nine meters in diameter after six straight hours of a forty-five meter En/In combination. With this and the residual poison draining at his stamina, Kite could not stop his En from slipping.

The shock of the sensory loss was enough to wake him up, however. Suddenly forced to rely on his eyesight, he realized just how shitty the room’s lighting actually was—and the monster suddenly knew it, too, closing its wings to submerge them all in darkness. He could hear Killua scream—

Kite seized his aura with all his might and _pushed_. The scene of the room came instantly—bodies at his feet, four more ants diving at his back, the air filling with glitter once again, and the monster hovering over him, for some reason. Kite raised his hand upward to defend, but the air above was totally empty. So where…?

Gon, lying on the floor. Killua, nowhere to be found.

“KILLUA!” he hoarsely screamed as he dispatched the next batch of ants. The monster left the range of his En; how far did it reach, now, anyways? Six meters? Two?

The third wave of drowsiness, stronger than those previous. He could no longer keep Ren and En up at the same time, so he was breathing in the glitter, again.

“Killua…!”

He tried holding his shirt to his nose, but the particles were small enough to pass through the fibers with ease. Kite fell to his knees and began to cough violently, his narrow shoulders heaving, the scaly flecks forming a sticky crust on the roof of his mouth. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't hold his breath for more than a second.

“Killua…”

Another ant jumped at him; Kite sprang to his feet and tore it in half. His vision spun, and he fought to get a hold of it, and his eyes fell on Gon, just another lump on the corpse-ridden ground. Stumbling over to his side, Kite stooped down and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery—a pulse. Still alive. Another ant came, and he ripped off its head with one hand while scooping Gon off the floor with the other. Ah, but when had #3 disappeared…?

Doesn’t matter. He had to get out of here. Where was Killua?

He walked out of the room into the adjoining tunnel. Where was Killua?

Another ant turned the corner and rushed at him. A fourth wave of drowsiness filled his mind with static.

Kite ran away.

 

* * *

 

The sun was up, he dimly noted as he crossed the threshold of the great tree between NGL and Rokario. Kite collapsed against the side of its colossal roots, his arms shaking with the effort it took to hold Gon to his chest. In gradual increments, he sank to his knees, bent forward, and set the boy on the ground.

 _“Hahh_ …” he gasped out, rolling onto his back, and by the time he finally stopped panting, a delivery truck slowed to a stop in front of him.

“Nice to see you, Kite,” Knov offered.

“Oi, is this the little brat stuck to Ging’s heel, all those years ago?” Morel inquired, following behind him. “Time sure does fly. Maybe you would've been better-off tailing him a bit longer, though. You look like shit.”

“He's good, Morel,” Knov informed. “This just means the enemy is quite formidable.”

“Hm. If you say so.”

“So what are we up against?”

“… Nen user. Poison specialist,” Kite quietly rasped.

“Is that what's up with the kid, over there?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of poison we talkin’?”

“Airborne. Paralyzer. Filtration doesn't work, but Ren can blow it away.”

Morel gave a boisterous laugh. “If that's the case, then I'll have no problem.”

“That's not all,” Kite insisted through his teeth. “It can read its opponents scarily well. And its aura… is something serious. It probably can do more than it's shown.”

“Yeah, well, so can we.”

“Do you still want a part in the operation, Kite?” Netero asked, speaking up for the first time. “We have room for you on the team.”

Kite looked up at the truck’s windshield, Spin and Stick watching anxiously from the front seat, the Chairman’s impressive presence most likely the only thing keeping them from jumping out.

“… No,” he eventually said. “No, I'm done.”

“For the best,” Morel approved.

“What about Gon, do you think?” Netero asked again.

“Gon?” Kite echoed. “He'll want to, sure. His friend's… still in there.”

One way or another.

“Oh? Zeno won't be happy,” the Chairman muttered to himself. “Well, I'm willing to give him a chance. You too, if you change your mind.”

With that said, they walked through the checkpoint tree, and Spin threw open the truck door.

 _“Kite,_ ” she gasped as she crouched awkwardly at his side, unsure of whether or not it would be appropriate to touch him. “What happened?”

“I made a mistake,” Kite answered flatly.

“What—”

“Let's just go.” Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to his feet and staggered over to where he'd left Gon, picking the boy up by one arm and pulling him over his shoulder.

“W-wait; let me carry him!” Spin called out, but Kite ignored her, touting Gon to the back of the cargo hold and shifting him off on the carpeted floor within. As he lifted himself up onto the bench beside him, Kite met her worried eyes and sighed.

“Sorry, Spin. We'll talk later.”

“Oh, yeah, I get it,” she nervously concurred. “You probably want to rest, now. Feel free to pass out.”

But after the door shut and the truck took off across the wasteland, despite his heavy, drug-induced fatigue, Kite couldn't fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

Sunlight streamed into the inn’s small room, and chirping outside the window was a bluebird— _Sialia currucoides_ , his mind supplied. The doctor had just left with good news: no lasting damage, should regain consciousness in two or three days. Kite sat on the end of the boy’s bed, having decided to stick around until he woke up.

It was the least he could do.

Monta, Spin, and Stick had elected to stay as well, though there was nothing here for them to do. Mostly, they just hovered around nearby and whispered concernedly behind his back. Kite supposed he should do something to reassure them, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. There were only two or three days left.

“Where’s Killua?”

But Gon didn’t care to wait that long, it seemed.

“I left him behind,” Kite answered.

Gon sat up a little straighter, no trace of lethargy in any of his features, almost as if he’d been awake the whole time. His eyes were bright and alert, in tune with the world around him. Clear days like this were meant to hold his gaze, Kite distantly mused. It was surreal.

“So he was out of reach, or something?”

“I couldn’t find him,” Kite muttered. “And I was almost unconscious. So I ran.”

“Ah. I see,” Gon hummed.

Kite breathed in deeply and said, “I’m sorry.” Not so hard. “Because of me, Killua—”

“It’s okay,” Gon interrupted. All that changed in his expression was the resurgence of a can-do spirit, that indomitable cheerfulness Kite had come to expect from him. It was almost as if everything was okay.

“Killua is definitely alive.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still Friday where I live, but I did the math, and it's like 10 in the morning on Saturday if you live in Australia, so I figure I can post the chappy now. Tags have been updated, btw
> 
> Also, Bisky is ruining my angst-fest!!!! Every scene that she's in is *gags* h a p p y. She's such a fucking savage, I love her
> 
> Also also, if you can't read Palm's dialogue, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IMMEDIATELY, AND I WILL FIX IT
> 
> Edit: Palm's dialogue has been normalfied. All new readers will never know how I cheated the system to insert a new font...... what a shame

Kite didn’t know what to make of Netero’s message.

> To.Kite&Gon:
> 
> Will You fight?! Or not?!
> 
> **↓↓↓**
> 
> We welcome you anytime!!

Hadn’t he said that he was done, after all? What was this supposed to mean?

Gon had no such misgivings as he turned away from the notice board, sufficiently fired up. “Alright, let’s go!”

“Wait, Gon,” Kite said, massaging his temples with his right hand. “Things with the Chairman are never this simple.”

“But… it says, ‘anytime’…”

“You’d have to meet with someone already on the task force, at the very least. And who knows what it'll take to get _that_ to happen,” Kite added reproachfully, more than a little vexed. The Hunter Association had sanctioned a quarantine on NGL that applied to everyone but the Hunters on the extermination team, and Netero hadn’t given them any token of authorization. Seeing as all they had was this cryptic invitation on a public chalkboard, they would have to meet with someone already in the know. It was bullshit like this that kept him on the freelance side of the Hunter business—that, and he enjoyed not being tied down to the Association's whims. Corporate bureaucracy got on _all_ of his nerves.

“But isn’t the team already… in…” Gon trailed off as a cold shadow fell over the two.

“When they said one of them would be Kite, I’d had my suspicions, but ultimately, I decided to reserve judgement. After all, there are many, many other people in the world who could have that name, and Knov-Sensei has told me I sometimes air on the presumptuous side of things. But now, I see my fears were not ungrounded, **Kite.** ”

“Oh, fuck,” he cursed under his breath.

Palm Siberia twitched menacingly before them, just as… radiant as ever.

“I also see that the Hunter Association has ignored my request that you and your awful teacher be detained. I suppose that explains why I never heard back from them—how cowardly, to avoid the consequences of their actions. Unbelievable.”

“You know Ging?” Gon naively spoke up, oblivious to both his predicament and the shushing gestures Kite frantically made beside him.

Palm stiffly lowered her head to cast her sights on the shorter boy. “Oh, and you must be Gon. Yes, I’m familiar with that scheming, filthy brute. He and this man have insulted Knov-Sensei and I on more than one occasion—two times, in fact. The Chairman is strangely fond of him, though, so he gets to run amok as he pleases. Just thinking about where he might be, right now, unpunished… **I can’t stand it.** ”

Well, yes, Ging _had_ called her a psychotic bitch, but all Kite had done was stand aside and wait for the waitress to bring out their tacos. Guilty by association, he supposed.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry about that,” Gon graciously apologized. “Er, who are you?”

“I am Palm Siberia, and I’m here to team up with you for the Chairman’s challenge.”

“Challenge…?!”

“Myself, you two, and Morel’s students will have a battle royale,” she disclosed, raising one spindly index finger in explanation. “Whoever’s still standing after thirty minutes can join the punitive force, and we’re allowed to team up with one other person, if we so choose, meaning that we’re not obligated to fight against them. The match will take place either in thirty days or the day after all contestants give their go-ahead on the board, here.”

Sure enough, a little off to the side of Netero’s message read three signatures.

> I’m Ready—KNUCKLE  
>  I’m Ready—Shoot      **TEAM**
> 
> Ready— _Palm_

So that’s what that was. When Kite had read _Palm_ , he hadn’t thought it meant… Palm.

The format of the challenge was flawed, he immediately observed; the contestants could simply choose not to attack for the duration of the match, and since none of them would end up unconscious, they would all technically win. On the other hand, no self-respecting Hunter would settle for that kind of victory. So maybe it wasn’t so flawed, after all. The combatants’ de facto goal, then, would be to take out as many other people as possible without self-termination in the process.

And then there was that interesting buddy-up business. Since the winners of the match were individuals instead of the optional teams, unconscious/dead people would still lose even if they had a victorious teammate, and because it wasn’t specified that only teammates could work together, the only benefit to having a partner would be that you’d have one less person to potentially fight—a person you could be reasonably sure wouldn’t betray you and whose help would be more reliable than that of a temporary truce.

So if Kite decided to fight, he would have the option to join the NGL lineup—assuming he lasted the thirty minutes, of course. Conversely, if he chose to ignore the offer, Gon would be forced either to fight alone (and thus be at a disadvantage) or to ally with Palm, who was likely to kill him before the match even started. All in all, it was the perfect ploy to get Kite to play along and stay wrapped up in this NGL fiasco.

Why was the Chairman so eager to have him on the team?

“That’s why I’m here,” Palm haltingly declared. “As you can see, those ingrates Knuckle and Shoot have already joined up, and Knov-Sensei has informed me that Kite does not wish to participate, so we must band together if we want to be on equal footing.”

Gon's smile dropped.

“Kite… doesn’t want to help?”

And if that wasn’t an effective guilt trip, Kite didn’t know what was.

“No, I never said that,” he denied. “I’ll do my best to get you to NGL, Gon. I’ll team up with you.”

“WHAT?”

“Ah, you must be mistaken, Miss Palm; Kite would never back down from something as important as this! I’m really sorry, but I’d like to have him as my partner,” Gon diplomatically explained, and Kite felt his stomach turn. Is this how it must’ve been for Ging? This overwhelming need to be anywhere else?

“… You dare… reject me?”

Gon clasped his hands together in apology. “Only because Kite is my other option! If he were someone else I didn’t know, I’d be glad to team up with you!”

“I can’t believe… that after I so kindly explained the rules of the bout… you **spit in my face. I didn’t have to seek you out, and I didn’t have to contact your old teacher, but I did—all for N o t h i n g. And then there’s YOU, you viLE SNAKE. HOW DARE YOU GO BACK ON YOUR WORD? I WILL RIP YOU APART WHERE YOU STAND.** ”

“Oh, yeah?” Kite rumbled, his own aura coming off him like smoke in response. “Go ahead and try.”

Gon dove between them before the matter could escalate, however. “ _W-wait!_ Miss Palm, listen: what exactly are you losing by not having a partner? My Hatsu isn’t something team-oriented, and since we only just met each other, our teamwork won’t be very good. So joining me won’t be very beneficial, and the only way that going alone would be _harmful_ is if the two groups teamed up against you. And I _promise_ not to do that. You too, right, Kite?”

“Er, yeah.”

“ **But** … what if two people from the same group attack me together?”

“I promise not to do that, too! And if the other team tries, I’ll get in their way to make it more fair!”

To Kite’s infinite horror, Palm… blushed.

“Oh, my… How honorable of you… But, how do I know you won't betray me? Your **friend** has already proven himself untrustworthy enough.”

“Pinky swear,” Gon told her, dead serious. “Come on; let’s do it.” He took her pinky in his and pledged in an odd, lilting chant, “I Pinky Swear That I Won’t Let Palm Fight Two Or More People At Once By Herself In Our Match. If I Break Our Promise, I Will Have To Swallow A Million Needles. Pinky: Sworn!”

Kite couldn’t believe that he actually, willingly held her hand. If her skin was half as clammy as it looked, then it was probably like touching a dead fish.

“On the island where I’m from, there’s another part: you push your thumbs together like this! Sealed with a kiss!”

Palm’s overly large eyes widened even further, and further, and… “ _Ah—!”_

… What the hell.

“Are you satisfied, now, Miss Palm?”

“A-ah, yes. I believe you,” she whispered. “I guess there’s… nothing left for me to do here, then. I look forward to meeting you… in combat, I m-mean.”

“Me too!”

“O-oh, you,” she giggled. “Until then, Gon~”

“Bye!”

And then she ambled out of the village center, free to wander about without anyone in her way; over the course of her, well, being in public, the entire square had been abandoned by all other people.

“Don’t ever find yourself alone with her, Gon,” Kite finally said. “Stick with me at all times, alright?”

“Sure,” Gon complied, still staring down the empty hallway where Palm had left. His eyes had a faraway look to them.

 _He’s thinking about Killua_ , something in Kite told him.

“Let’s go back to the inn,” he suggested.

Gon nodded but was silent the entire way back, and Kite couldn’t think of anything to say. It was Gon who usually carried the conversations, he realized.

Finally, as they stood outside their room’s door, Kite decided to very quietly ask, “Are you okay?”

“I shouldn’t have let her go,” he said. “I’m ready. You’re ready. What are we waiting for? We should have the fight right now. Let’s go back and write our names.”

“… I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kite warily declined.

Maybe if they’d fought that ant under more favorable conditions—if they met in broad daylight, if he’d known to hold his breath, if everyone was fully-rested…

He recalled the hair-raising feel of its aura and knew there was no way.

“If you go back now, then there’s a good chance you’ll just die.”

Gon didn’t say anything.

 _He’s weighing his options,_ it whispered again.

“But hey, you don’t have to stay long!” Kite hastily amended. “Just long enough for me to train you, a little, alright?”

Gon considered it for a moment, pushed open the door, and said, “A week. You have one week to make me stronger, and then I’m going back.”

And then a fist flew into his face.

“IDIOT!” a voice from inside roared. Out came a little girl—around Gon’s age, really—in a dainty, pink dress and a crown braid of blond hair. “Don’t you know the old man has a mean streak a continent wide? If he gives you a month to do something, then it should probably take a whole year,” the girl berated. “You won’t be able to defeat them after one week, not on your life.”

Gon squinted up from his heap on the floor and gaped in more surprise than pain. “B-Bisky?!”

“I’m familiar with Morel’s brats, and let me tell you, they’ll chew you up faster than…”

The girl broke herself off when she finally seemed to notice Kite. She ogled him dumbfoundedly while taking a step back, like the full height of his body was something that required a whole other world of concentration. Then, very slowly and obviously, her eyes scrolled up and down his entire frame, soaking up every detail, filling him with the uneasy sense of… being dissected. It was almost like she was checking him out.

“ _PhwEEuuu,_ ” she whistled lowly in appreciation.

What.

“We-e-ell, _hello, there!_ Wanna introduce me to the stringbean, Gon?”

Stringbean?

“Oh, this is Kite! He's Ging’s student—really strong. Kite, this is Bisky, my mentor!”

“Mentor?” he repeated dryly, this time aloud.

“That’s right, hot stuff,” she purred. “Taught him everything he knows.”

_What._

“Wow, that’s, um, really impressive for someone so young,” he awkwardly complemented, trying to be cordial.

Bisky just gave a weird, almost haughty laugh, surprisingly deep in pitch. “Trust me; I’m more than woman enough to get the job done,” she said with a wink. And then she winked again, in case he didn’t get the point.

And to think Kite had believed nothing could be more uncomfortable than watching Palm crush on Gon. At this rate, he’d sweat through his shirt.

Oh, no—and now she was waiting for him to respond, but there was absolutely no way he could follow up to something like that. Nope, no words coming to mind _._ _Say something, Gon,_ he silently begged.

“Um, but how are you here?” Gon inquired. Kite hid his sigh of relief with a cough.

“Some freaky chick rang me up—still don’t know how the hell she got my number—and said you needed training, or something. Do you?”

“YES,” he immediately replied. “Sorry, Kite, but I wanna train with Bisky, instead.”

“That’s quite alright,” Kite meekly forgave, retroactively cringing at the weakness of his voice. “I’ll, just, leave you to it, then.”

Bisky sidled up to him a little closer. “There’s no rule that says we can’t _both_ teach him, you know. We’ll be like colleagues! Go on all sorts of _wacky_ adventures—”

“Bisky. Please. We need to get going,” Gon urged. “What should I do?”

“Hmph. I was thinking of Ren endurance, to start. But what do _you_ think, Kiiiite~?”

“You’re the teacher, not me,” he answered, discreetly backing up toward the door. “I'll go get some exercise in the meantime.”

“Mmmmmmm, I’d like to see that,” Bisky leered. “Do you need any help? I’m called ‘teacher’ by more than just little boys, you know.”

 _In what universe is that a good pick-up line?,_ Kite wondered to himself, which he really shouldn’t have done, because now he was taking too long to respond again, and everyone was waiting for him to speak, and he needed Gon to say something _right now_.

“Bisky. Let’s go,” Gon insisted.

“Fine, fine, you little cockblock,” she muttered. “Where’s Killua?”

Kite's hand stopped on the doorknob.

“He could use some training, too,” Bisky continued. “Come on; spill. You guys are never more than five steps apart.”

Gon’s eyes hardened. “He’s hiding in NGL, right now.”

“NGL? That hippie colony? What’s going on there?”

“There are these huge chimera ants that are really strong,” he explained. “They’re eating a lot of people, and it’s a big problem, and we got separated while going into their nest. I’m not sure how much of the rest you know, but that’s what I need to get stronger for: so that I can go back and save him. So. Let's. Start.”

“Hold on, Gon,” she sighed. “Why would you assume that he’s still there? Killua’s not _that_ stupid; if it’s so dangerous, then he wouldn’t stick around.”

_“Because if he had left, he’d be here right now.”_

Bisky made a mistake, Kite recognized. She assumed Gon hadn’t thought this through.

But he’d thought about it. He’d thought about it.

“You said Ren endurance, right?” Gon carried on, firing up his Ren to the max. The ensuing wind began to stir the room—Bisky’s dress flapping, Kite’s hair blowing behind him. “I can hold it for fifty—no… sixty minutes, as is. How long should it be?”

Bisky stared at him quietly for a moment. “… Three hours.”

And although he’d known her for a grand total of four minutes, Kite thought she looked a little sad.

“Osu!”

Having lost the will to leave, Kite sat down against the wall. Watching Gon force out his Ren was a slightly painful experience; he started out strong, aura heady with abundance, but after twenty minutes, his breath started to come out a bit heavier, and his cheeks grew a bit pink from exertion. From then on, he broke down slowly but surely, his stance adopting a number of microscopic crutches, the occasional twitch of his muscles blossoming into a violent, uncontrollable shiver. Veins popped. Sweat rolled. And sure enough, the moment Bisky’s timer hit the sixty minute mark, he slumped to the floor.

“They say it takes a whole month to add ten minutes to your Ren length,” Bisky remarked. “You won’t have time to sleep.”

Gon was already back on his feet.

Turning a page of her magazine, she peered at Kite from over the cover. “You don’t think I’m going too hard on him, do you?”

“Not at all. I would’ve given him four hours, actually.”

“Eh?” she squawked, indignant at the implication; she obviously took a lot of stock in her curriculum. “You _do_ know he only has a month, right? There’s no way anyone could gain three hours in that time, not even with me there to guide them.”

He shook his head at her. “Sure, it’s not normal, but our circumstances aren’t exactly normal, either.”

“Tch. You’re cute, but you’re crazy.”

Kite turned his gaze back to Gon’s sputtering aura. His lips were peeled back in a snarl, revealing two white bars of teeth and the motion of their gnashing. A bead of sweat fell into his eye; he didn’t blink it away.

_(You guys are never more than five steps apart.)_

“I need to go stretch my legs,” Kite mumbled. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

“Of course, buttercup. We wouldn’t want those long legs to get sore~” he heard her call from over his shoulder. Kite forewent politeness and shut the door without answering.

So he wandered the village for a while, straying past hair salons and unfamiliar restaurant franchises, a deserted playground and a lonely bookstore, little grocery outlets hooked up to gas stations like siamese twins attached at the notion of convenience. Eventually, he stopped by a tiny thrift shop out of nostalgia—nostalgia? Maybe he really was getting old…

“Hi!” the cashier greeted when he walked in the door.

Kite was actually caught a little off guard. “Oh, um, hi.”

“Half-off all housewares, clothing, and accessories! Just let me know if you need help finding something!”

“Thanks,” he said with an attempt at a smile.

The store was completely devoid of other people, silent but for the hum of a few rickety ceiling fans. Racks of clothes he didn’t need, towers of books he didn’t go for, shelves of knick-knacks that mostly just creeped him out. Still, taking care to not expose his Hunter License (having dealt with more than a few bandits in his day), Kite fished around his wallet for some change.

There had to be something here he wouldn’t feel too bad about buying. Despite his frugality and lack of interest in what he’d seen (Kite was not the type to tangibly _want_ anything, anyways), he always felt obliged to lend small businesses a hand—something that Ging had called a pity-kink. Really, he was just a little in love with the idea of people working to improve their condition, no pity involved.

 _I didn’t bring you along because I felt bad for you,_ Ging had once lectured him. _I did it because you were wasting your life, and I could see that your life would be a shame to waste._

His phone abruptly buzzed in his pocket, loud enough to make the cashier jump in surprise.

> Incoming Call…
> 
> Spinner Clow

Kite let it go to voicemail, bought a ball of yarn, and tossed it to some stray cats he saw on the way back.

 

* * *

 

It took twenty-six hours for Gon to pass out. Kite, despite being unsurprised, was actually quite impressed; how long had it taken for him to reach same point, all those years ago under Ging's unwatchful eye? Five hours? Even less?

Honestly, it was a little scary.

“Looks like it's time to get out my ability,” Bisky said, cracking her gloved fingers. “ _Magical Esthetician: Piano Massage!”_

With a shower of pink sparkles, a Nen-construct appeared in the center of the room, took the form of a curvy woman, and started dancing her fingers up and down Gon's back.

“Pretty great, am I right?” Bisky cheekily inquired. “Deep tissue, cartilage, head and feet—Cookie does it all. Thirty minutes will be like a whole night of sleep!”

“Can you use it on yourself while you're sleeping?”

“Well, no, I’d have to be conscious, but… you're missing the point!” she snapped. “My Cookie is highly desired the world over! I've massaged royalty, you hear me? Hell, I've turned down more Kings than I've probably accepted.”

“… And?”

“ _And_ , that’s helped to make me the most eligible bachelorette in this hemisphere,” she smugly concluded. “And it could all be yours. Just imagine—instant access to all my lovely services, free of charge!”

“Are you charging Gon?”

“No, jerk.As his mentor, it’s my job to help him reach his full potential. There's a lot there yet untapped, I think you can agree.” Kite couldn't argue with that, and she wiggled her eyebrows at his silence. “You, however, don't have any of his charms, so if you asked me, I'd have to get something in return.”

“Well, I'm not asking,” he drawled. _Something_ , indeed. Even if Kite wanted her services,there was no way he would ever whore himself out for it.

 _Prostitution is a risky business,_ Ging had said. _The day will come when you'll have to do it, but make sure it's your last resort._ Then, immediately afterwards, he’d posed as a stripper by the side of the road so he and Kite would have an easier time hitchhiking.

“Or you could become my student, therefore making your development my priority.”

“… I'm still not asking.”

“Oh, come on,” Bisky sighed. “You took _Ging_ as a teacher—Ging! That’s, like, trailer-park-mom levels of not giving a fuck. What exactly did he do for you, huh? Throw a picture of the word 'Nen' at your face and go out for a smoke? Your education is bound to have some gaps.”

Kite was reminded of the time Ging actually did leave him for a cigarette… for two months. Okay, so Bisky might've had a point, there.

His teacher, however, _had_ given him this valuable piece of advice: if a woman is nagging you, turn the situation on its head. And, not gonna lie, he didn't really like getting talked down to by a preteen.

“You're just jealous,” he tried and immediately regretted trying; it sounded so much less stupid in his head.

And of course Bisky had to laugh. “Of Ging? Gimme a break; the best thing he's probably done is bring this little sucker into the world.”

Little sucker? Who…?—oh. Gon was Ging's son. Somehow, Kite had forgotten—which was interesting, because they looked so much alike. More than that, he supposed, Gon just seemed like… his own person. Connected to Ging only through his desire to meet him. So when Kite looked at him, the only thing he saw was… him.

Still, there was no way Kite was going to take this sitting down. “And what do you know about what Ging's done?”

“Eh, the fundamentals. He dug up some stuff, basically,” she chuckled. “We're both Two-Star Hunters, pal; I've gotten just as much shit done in my day. So you should treat my offer with some respect.”

“… You're not serious.”

She whipped out her license as evidence, and sure enough, it was laminated to the same level as Ging’s—two stars. Just who the hell was this girl?

“… Okay, that's, um… wow. Okay.”

Bisky waved the card around the bridge of her nose. “Reconsidering?”

Despite being sure there was nothing she could teach him, he imagined the blow to his pride at having a kid boss him around and the backlash from Ging for the betrayal… Okay, there probably wouldn’t be any backlash. In fact, he was more likely to commend Kite for seeking out new opportunities where he could find them. And yet, as irrational as it was, he didn’t want to be taught by anyone but Ging.

“No, not really.”

She put her license away and pulled out her magazine. “You'd probably be a sucky student, anyways,” she grumbled. “Probably picked up on all of his bad habits—how did you even run into Gon?”

“He just sorta… showed up,” Kite lamely recounted. “I think he was looking for Ging but found me instead? It wasn't really clear.”

“Because you guys seem really close after only knowing each other, like, a week.”

They did? “Well, Gon’s a friendly boy,” he offered in lieu of his skepticism. Kite didn't think they were that close.

“He thinks of you quite highly,” she added. “I can tell.”

That, he agreed with. “Yeah.”

“Don't disappoint him.”

“… Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

And one week later, Bisky was left pacing the narrow confines of their quarters, Kite sitting leg-over-knee in a nearby armchair. He observed her rambling with a patience that spoke more of his reserved nature than any actual lenity; his repose had always carried a certain dispassion that pushed his softer features out of focus, though in this case, perhaps he looked on not without a little fondness—perhaps not without a little pride.

“I can’t believe it. How. HOW.”

“Nothing with Nen is a sure bet,” Kite told her. “Our circumstances are far from ordinary.”

“But a _week?”_ she repeated. “He gained TWO HOURS of Ren endurance in a WEEK? That’s not just unheard-of; it goes against every Nen-theory book I’ve ever read, every Nen-theory book I've ever _written_ —”

At first glance, Gon looked awful, having not showered for a week while forcing his body beyond its limits—or, rather, forcing his limits to move with his body. His hair was caked with sweat, flattening his usual spikes into a greasy curtain, and his cheeks were hollow from the strain, the skin purpling slightly at the crest of the divots.

But his eyes were alive with hope.

 

* * *

 

Neferpitou hit the ground running, so to speak. Bounding up the stairwell from its egg site, it took three—nine—fifteen steps at a time before it ran out of stairs to jump. It let its limbs fly instinctually, feeling out the million postures and processions taken by the billions to come before it; Pitou could distinctly sense each minute miracle that lead to this moment, every happenstance and diversion, and with a surge of something too removed from humility to accurately be called gratitude, it leapt into the present, trampolining off the web of evolutionary tributaries that all converged at the here and now, past the river delta and into the sea.

And it could _smell_ the sea—far beyond the horizon, a hundred miles away (160.93 kilometers, 28.97 nautical leagues), salt and iodine and little swimmy things. It’s been both the school of fish and the falcon that scoops one from the water, predator and prey finally stepping out of the circle of life, hand in hand, thought to thought, gazing back at the cycle in which they lived and died for so many millennia (eons, ages). And they thought it was beautiful. And they thought they were beautiful.

It chased the smell all the way outdoors, to the ledges on the walls of the nest, and threw its hands out to hail the sun. Right then and there, Pitou decided that it enjoyed being alive.

“Took you long enough,” said someone on the ledge.

Pitou regarded the someone and leaned further into its infinite wealth of intuition. “Are you… my brother?”

“If that’s what you want to see me as,” he said. “My name is Shaiapouf, and I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Oh?” Pitou hummed. “I came as fast as I could.”

“Nevermind that. Look to the east,” he ordered. And in the east, there was a great, shimmering wall of mist that cut through the forest and climbed high into the sky. “Those are my clones,” he revealed. “I have their cells arranged to create an adaptable mirage around the nest. There are two humans trapped inside and one that can escape as he pleases. Between the three of them, someone is bound to eventually break through.”

“But… aren’t humans weak?”

“Yes, but these are different,” Shaiapouf claimed. “They have Nen. You have it, too.”

Pitou let go of the strange pressure that'd been building and marveled at the rush of energy. “Nen… I like it.”

“Yours is as strong as I’d hoped, from what I could feel from your egg,” Pouf said. “Stronger than my own and stronger than these humans.”

“Oh, really?” it purred.

“Push it out from your body as far as you can. Let them feel your power; let them know they can come no further.”

Pitou’s En reached far and wide, and everything it touched _stopped_ —Morel in shock, Knov in fear, and Netero in anticipation. Then, just as Pouf had planned, the humans retreated, allowing him to call back his clones. The other chimera ants, after realizing the soul-crushing weight came from one of their own, concluded that another Royal Guard had been born and continued to mill about.

Killua, on the other hand, made sure to stay very still.


	3. Chapter 3

Once Bisky admitted she could find no fault with his Ren, Gon took off without so much as a by-your-leave. Even Kite recognized this as out of character; from the moment they’d met, Gon’s politeness had underscored everything he said and did. If he’d thought to say goodbye, he definitely would’ve done so—and in good humor, to boot. But the fact of the matter was that Gon did _not_ think, nor did he look back, nor did he slow down. So all Kite could do was chase after him on his way out the door.

“Going to sign up for the fight?”

“Yeah,” Gon absently replied, his voice rough from the week of disuse. People gave him strange looks as he passed them on the street, followed shortly by them wrinkling their noses at the overpowering smell of sweat. A few old women shot accusatory glares at Kite, as if he were responsible for the boy’s dishevelment; Kite bravely did not make eye contact.

They got to a more crowded section of the sidewalk, and as he watched everyone else rearrange themselves to not go anywhere near them, he decided to murmur, “You could’ve at least took a bath, first.”

“Hm? Oh, maybe. Am I bothering you?”

“I’m used to it,” Kite sighed, wondering if the innkeeper would charge them extra for the room detoxification.

When they got to village center, Kite slowed to a stop by the entrance while Gon raced around the length of the room in search of a stick of chalk. Eventually, he found one, but as he raised his hand to the space beside Netero's message, a previously unobtrusive bystander caught his wrist in the act.

“This one’s not for messin’ with, brat. Go draw somewhere else,” said the man (teenager?); the white gakuran and pompadour screamed schoolyard thug, but his physique was anything but pubescent. Had he been held back a few grades, or something?

Gon blinked owlishly at the confrontation. “But I need to write my name, please. Can you move for a second?”

“And I thought I told you to go draw somewhere else,” he brusquely submitted once more.

So this was what they were up against. With a twinge of dejection, Kite’s shoulders slumped a tad lower—faced with the possibility that he might be the oldest out of all the applicants. But honestly, how was he supposed to compete with all these kids and half-adults? It was unusual for a team like this to be filled with teenagers, right?

Interestingly enough, Gon caught on to the situation before Morel’s student. “Wait… You wouldn’t happen to be a part of Chairman Netero’s contest, would you?”

The man hesitated, instantly on guard. “What’s it to ya?”

“I’m Gon Freecss! One of other Hunters!” he chirped.

“… What?”

“Uh… I’m Gon Fr—”

“THEY SENT IN A LITTLE KID?” he abruptly bellowed. “THEY EXPECT ME TO FIGHT A LITTLE KID?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” Gon nervously affirmed. “So, if you could let me sign my name, that’d be great…”

“BUT I’LL KILL YOU.”

“Well, maybe, but we won’t know until you try!”

Knuckle/Shoot firmly shook his head. “No, I know. You’ll die. _I_ might go easy on you, but between Shoot and that psycho… you’re better off sitting this one out.”

And Gon lost a bit of his composure.

“Please let go of me.”

“Only if you're gonna scram.”

“No,” he refused a little bit louder. “I have to fight. I have someone who needs me to fight. So I’m sorry, but you’re going down.”

And the man exploded in a vengeful bloodlust.

_“So kids these days think they’re pretty hot shit, huh?”_

Gon stared him down undaunted. “You don’t scare me.”

The man’s aura jumped even higher, surprising even Kite with the sheer bulk of it. “DON’T SCARE YA, HUH?”

“Hey, hey,” Kite promptly intervened. “I understand your concerns, but the Chairman chose him regardless, and we have to trust his judgement. Besides that, he said was sorry, didn’t he? So just keep on walking.”

“Ehhhh? Then how about we have him prove himself?”

“Pr—”

“FIGHT ME. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.”

“All in good time,” Kite said, a bit of Nen stewing behind his words. “Save it for the match.”

“Match… so you must be… Kite,” the man crisply deduced. “Well, my name is Knuckle Bine, and I’ve got news for you, fool: I’M NOT WAITING A DAY TO KICK YOUR ASS.”

“Kite, it’s okay. I’ll take him on.”

“THAT’S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Kite hissed. “You’re exhausted, and there’s no telling just what he can do to mess you up. What if you get too injured to fight for real, huh? So just let me handle this.”

“No,” the kid stubbornly rejected. “I’m the one he has a problem with, so it’s my responsibility. You’re not involved.”

 _“I’m not inv_ — _?_ GON!” he hollered as the kid yanked his arm from his opponent's grasp.

“Can we at least go out of town? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Yeah, sure. Though somebody else is gonna be hurting by the end, fool.”

 

* * *

 

So they walked off to a nearby forest and stopped in the first clearing they found. Seeing as he was being ignored, Kite silently tagged along, hands fisted in his pockets, biting down on his frustration. Fucking kids. Why couldn’t Gon just listen? Why did no one ever listen to him?

A better question made him jolt: _Why aren’t you doing anything to stop this?_

And the answer made his ire wilt with self-loathing: _You just don’t want to push him any farther away from you._

When had Kite become so lonely?

“Alright, brat. Let's go!”

Gon rushed him head-on, maneuvering around Knuckle’s larger body with a springy deftness only someone as small as him could pull off, packing both momentum and Nen into every thrust—punches that, despite all of this, Knuckle dodged with time to spare. While nimble in regard to each individual movement, the speed at which he connected those movements was painfully slow; already, Kite could see his fatigue take hold, the week’s nonstop exertion too much for even Bisky’s Hatsu to fully negate. It weighed down his attacks like a rock on a wet paper towel, threatening to tear a hole at the slightest pull.

And Knuckle saw that metaphorical rock, picked it up, and used it to bash Gon’s skull in. The man was as good as his aura promised, the flux of his rhythm not graceful, per se, but nigh impossible to counter—impulse and inertia balanced with a firm, practiced hand. It was obvious he’d been fighting his entire life, had hammered out a workable style through painful trial and error, self-taught in every regard. Of course, all that experience with taking damage must’ve done wonders for his stamina, no doubt rendering him twice as tough as he was strong. Yes, this was a _highly_ experienced brawler.

So it was no surprise when Knuckle effortlessly broke through Gon’s guard. With a clean one-two punch, he had him flat on his stomach, pausing his assault for the boy to gather his arms beneath him and push himself to his knees. Knuckle waited till he was fully upright before knocking him to the ground, and again, Gon found it in himself to get back on his feet. And again Knuckle struck him down.

And as Gon forced himself up once more, he started to sway like a windchime in a light breeze; the blood matting his hair flowed gently down the back of his neck to soak the fabric of his shirt. Kite wondered if the concussion was as severe as it looked.

_Stay down, Gon. Just stay down._

“Stay down,” Knuckle gruffly instructed. “We get it: you’re tough. And now that we’ve traded blows, I can see… you ain’t a bad kid. I’ll let you off the hook.”

But suddenly, Gon’s shoulders began to shake, his face turned toward the ground. Kite was afraid the whole encounter had actually made him cry, but then his ears caught it: the soft, tattered shrapnel of laughter.

“Trade blows?” he laughed. “I didn’t even hit you once.”

Knuckle crossed his arms. “Just accept that I’ve accepted you, dummy.”

Gon’s head suddenly shot up, and although Kite couldn’t see his face from his viewpoint, he did see how Knuckle blanched at the sight.

“Hit me,” Gon said.

“No. You’re finished.”

To prove him wrong, Gon went back on the offensive, riding high on a second wind.

_“First comes rock…!”_

Knuckle backed off in surprise. It was a lot of aura, after all—too much for Gon to expend but expended nonetheless. It seemed as though his limits were always brushed aside whenever the situation called for more than he could possibly give, like his body had accepted that it would always be pushed too hard.

 _“Rock… Paper…_ **_Rock!_** _”_

And Knuckle dodged it, of course, as well as the rest of the flurry that followed. After avoiding a kick that strayed a little too close to his junk, Knuckle decided to be done with it and slugged him across the temple once more. And Gon did not get back up.

Releasing a long, pent-up breath, Kite strode over to Gon's side and inspected his cranium—a mess of hair and blood. What would be the best way to lift him? Over his shoulder? On his back?

“What’s the deal with that guy?” Knuckle asked.

Their massive height difference required that Kite carry him in his arms. “He lost someone very dear to him.”

“Jeez, if I had known that, I…”

He didn't stick around to hear the rest.

 

* * *

 

“What are the fucking odds?” Bisky swore.

They were back at the inn, a large, red splotch still visible in the middle of Bisky’s eyebrows—where she’d smacked herself after seeing him drag in Gon’s beaten form. Kite simply laid him down in bed and got to work bandaging his head-wounds.

“Well, I guess it’s for the best. His training wasn't over, anyways, but he ran out before I could get a word in edgewise. I didn’t chase because I thought _you_ were gonna stop him, actually,” she revealed. “But you were just trying to chaperone him? First of all, you totally failed, and second, you’re just as dumb as he is. Knuckle and Shoot are no joke.”

“Do we have any tweezers?” he murmured after spotting a few wood chips stuck in there.

“Here,” she sighed.

“Alright. And how about anything with hydrogen peroxide?”

“Yup,” she said as she placed the antiseptic in his outstretched hand, which immediately used it to douse the red sheen. Gon twitched at the sting but didn’t wake up.

“And how about—”

“The first aid kit’s right next to you, you know. I’m not your damn nurse.”

So Kite finished the job by himself. After pressing the final strip of tape to the gauze, he pulled his hands away, and the two of them looked at the boy for a long moment.

“… What exactly is Gon and Killua’s relationship?” Kite asked.

Bisky snorted disbelievingly. “Isn’t it obvious? They love each other.”

Love? What kind of love? “Meaning…?”

 _“I mean,_  I once walked in on them humping each other like a couple of mutts in heat.”

… Oh.

“It was pretty hot, actually.”

And Kite _definitely_ wasn’t ever getting that image out of his head.

Bisky lapsed into a fit of gleeful cackles. “God, I love shy guys like you. So friggin’ cute. But really, all you have to know is… well. You see how well Gon’s taking it.”

The _not very well_ went unsaid.

“I’m not the one who brought them together, you know. They were already like that when I found them,” she reminisced. “Together, that is. Stuck to each other like glue on… more glue. Best friends, quintessential. I remember them trying to avoid me, at first, because I was a girl and ‘cramped their style.’ Actually, they kind of avoided everyone, back then. They didn’t want anyone else intruding on their space; all they really cared to have was each other’s company. Which is weird, because you’ve _seen_ how friendly Gon is, right? He loves meeting new people! But when he had Killua by his side… he wasn’t really interested in any of that—not enough to go out of his way, at least. They both were just fine staying cooped up in their own little world.”

And now that she put it into words, Kite could see it clearly.

“That kind of familiarity is built up over more than a few life-or-death experiences,” Bisky sagely pondered. “Helped along by a bit of… desperation… for whatever it is they offer each other. _That’s_ a good recipe for attachment, right there.”

Kite swallowed stiffly.

“Anyways, I’m gonna go,” Bisky said over her shoulder.

“Go where?”

“To NGL, obviously. To find Killua.”

“W… what?” Kite sputtered. “But the country’s on lockdown! You’re not on the extermination team, are you?”

Bisky gave that weird, haughty laugh, again. “No, but do you really think I don’t have ways to get around that? I’m motherfucking _Bisky_ , for Christ’s sake; I _know_ people. This seems like a pretty dangerous job, though, so I’m not bringing novices like you or Gon with me. So don't ask if you can come.”

“Hold on,” he urged. “There’s at least one ant you should absolutely never face under any circumstance. It—”

“Yeah, yeah. Poison and mind-reading. I’ve heard,” she interrupted, effectively dismissing him.

Then, the twinkle dropped from her eyes to leave behind a stone-cold stare, keen and unfamiliar.

“Listen. I know you’re Ging’s lackey, and I know he doesn’t really do long-term relationships, but you have to stay here for Gon, okay? If you don’t look after him, no one will.”

“I was going to do that anyways,” he retorted. “And I’m not his ‘lackey.’”

“Whatever~” she sang. “Also, don’t tell Gon what I’m doing. He’s got enough on his mind as it is.”

“Roger that. I’ll just say you got bored and wandered off.”

“That’s the spirit!” she said with a wink.

And just before the door closed behind her, Kite thought of one more thing.

“Wait, Bisky,” he called out. “Just… be safe.”

The girl behind the door stopped in her tracks. Then, in the span of half a second, she burst back into the room, grabbed his face in her hands, and planted a big kiss on his lips.

“When I get back, we’re going on a proper date,” she told him, grinning ear to ear. “So don’t fall in love with anybody else in the meantime.”

With that, she ran off, waving him goodbye. Through the window, Kite watched her leave the inn, watched her fly past buildings with a Nen-enhanced sprint, watched her disappear behind the treeline.

He wiped his lips on his sleeve, and her lipstick left a pink smudge on the fabric.

 

* * *

 

Kite looked up from his book when Gon roused at long last.

“What day is it?” the boy croaked.

“Relax. You’ve been out for twelve hours.”

“No good,” he whispered. “That’s… a lot of time.”

“You got beat pretty bad,” Kite admitted.

Gon laughed—a dry, brittle sound. “I had no idea there were so many strong people in the world.”

“You and me both,” he murmured as he moved to sit on the bedside stool. “Do you want some water?”

“No. I wanna beat Knuckle.”

“… Have some water,” Kite insisted and propped the boy’s back up to tip a glass to his mouth. Carefully, he watched his swollen throat start to bob away, and even when the drinking paused, he kept the glass pressed to his lips till the boy gave in and drank it all.

A bit of water trailed down his chin from the corner of his mouth, and Kite really wanted to wipe it away, but he thought that might be going too far.

“And the thing is,” Gon continued, “he’s not anywhere near as strong as that ant. I can tell. I can tell.”

“If all goes well, no one in NGL will have to face that ant alone.”

Gon’s wrist finally came up to scrub the wetness off his jaw, and Kite felt himself relax a bit.

“I don’t have time for this. There’s just no _time_. And yet…!”

And yet.

“Damn,” the boy cursed. “Damn it all.”

Yeah.

“During the match, I can take on Knuckle, alright? Don’t worry about him anymore. You can deal with… Morel’s other student. Leave the others to me,” Kite said.

Gon immediately shook his head.

_“I'll be the one who faces Knuckle.”_

“Gon,” he stated. “Physically, Knuckle seems almost as good as me. You won’t stand a chance.”

“That’s why Bisky’s gonna train me some more! I’ll go to six hours Ren endurance!”

Kite exhaled slowly. “First of all, Ren training gives diminishing returns after four hours. Second, Bisky’s gone.”

“Huh?”

“She said something about… the Hunter Association… needing her guidance back at Headquarters. I don’t know. It seemed urgent.”

Gon’s face fell. “So she’s not coming back?”

He found the energy it took to shrug. “Who knows?”

Kite certainly didn't.

“Then you’re gonna have to train me, Kite,” Gon commanded.

Said man leaned the side of his head against the wall. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. “I’m a pretty tough teacher; I won’t go easy on you just because…”

_Because you’re Gon. Because I like you. Because I like how you look when you succeed._

But then, Kite met the boy’s eyes and inwardly cursed himself for the stupid question. Of course he was ready.

“Well,” he said after clearing his throat. “We’ll start with that four hour Ren endurance. I’m not Bisky, so I can’t keep you pumped with her _‘_ _Magical Esthetician_ _’_ or whatever, so it’ll probably take you five days or so. Then, we’ll do some sparring and fine-tune your Hatsu, because—and I’m sorry to say this—that thing is a mess.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gon eagerly agreed. Throwing the blankets off his body, he swung his feet over the side of the bed only to pause halfway through the movement. “Wait… Why am I naked?”

“I gave you a bath,” Kite sighed. “Yes, it was as awful and difficult as you’d imagine. Anyways, since you don’t have a change of clothes, you’ll be naked until your stuff gets out of the wash.”

“How long will it take?”

“About an hour.”

“Oh, can I borrow something of yours?”

“Gon. Open your eyes. You barely come up to my waist.”

“Would you mind if I trained naked?”

“Yes.”

“… Can you buy me another pair of pants?”

 

* * *

 

So there he was, one of the Association’s top Pro Hunters and a bona fide Nen master, leafing through rack after rack of pants. He didn’t mind it, truth be told, but it would’ve helped if Gon had _any_ idea of what his size was; his Aunt had apparently sewn all his clothes by hand and thus never introduced him to any sizing system. So Kite was left eyeballing a bunch of kids clothes without anywhere to start.

Maybe it’d be best to get him a range of things, for now, and take him here later to have him actually try stuff on. Really, his wardrobe should consist of more than just one outfit, though Kite wasn’t one to talk, given that he’d been wearing the same thing for the last… forever. At first, this had just been a side-effect of being dirt poor, but now that the Hunter business had set him up financially for the next thirty lifetimes, he found it felt weird to wear anything other than what he always had. Did Gon feel the same way?

“Kite!”

Spinner was there, running up behind him.

“Hi, Spin. How’ve you been?”

“Good, good. I wouldn’t have thought to see you here, since you usually shop at secondhand stores and the like.”

Yes, but he wasn’t shopping for himself; this was for Gon.

“Just thought I’d try it out,” he said, not sure why he wasn’t giving the actual answer. It was a spur-of-the-moment lie, unforeseen and unpredictable, a shard of human randomness embedded in his conduct. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a reason, though—just one he didn’t see.

“So what have you been up to?”

“Training, mostly.”

“Oh? What for?” she questioned. Clearly, she wasn’t familiar with the compulsive self-betterment that occupied the free time of most Pro Hunters. All the same, there did happen to be a goal, in this case.

“A tournament for those who wanna fight the chimera ants,” he explained.

Her face grew blank. “You’re… going back? I thought you were just staying here until Gon got better.”

“I changed my mind, recently. I’ll be in town for the next few weeks until the match.”

“Well,” she breathed. “I guess that’s understandable. Can I watch your fight, when it happens? To cheer you on?”

“No. It’ll be dangerous.”

“By just _watching?_ Of course I’d stick to the sidelines!”

Kite shook his head. “It’s a Nen fight; anything can happen. You know about the number of audience deaths per year at Heaven’s Arena, don’t you?”

“Heaven’s… Arena?”

“Nevermind. Just believe me when I say it’s impossible to determine where the battleground ends and the sidelines begin.”

Spin sighed but did not argue. “Well, good luck. What’s Gon been doing? Still asleep?”

“No,” he almost laughed; that seemed so long ago. “Nothing can keep him down for long. He’s training, too.”

“For the tournament?!” she exclaimed. “But he’s just a kid! And the chimera ants beat _you,_  Kite!”

“I never said it was a good decision,” he muttered. “But he has to. For Killua.”

“Killua’s definitely dead, Kite. Don’t give the poor boy false hope.”

And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? It all came back to this.

“It’s a Nen fight. Anything can happen.”

She rolled her eyes, exasperated. “So I’ve been told.”

“Really,” Kite insisted. “And besides, Gon is strong and getting stronger. He wouldn’t have been invited to the tournament if there were any doubt as to him being up to the task.”

“… Fine.”

But Kite knew she didn't like it.

“Anywho, me and the rest of the guys are going out to dinner, tomorrow, and we’d love for you to join us. You have enough time in your busy schedule for _that,_ don't you?”

“… Okay,” he assented. “Where and when?”

“Village center, seven PM. Wait… It’d be nineteen hundred for you Hunters, yeah?”

“Yes, we do use a twenty-four hour clock,” he confirmed. “But seven is fine.”

“Mmhmm. See you then, Kite.”

She walked out without carrying any bags, Kite observed. He then proceeded to buy Gon four different sizes of the same outfit; it was a hassle to carry so much money on him, anyways.

 

* * *

 

Netero’s spirits were high as he let himself be led through the Zoldyck mansion. He mildly took in all the typical extravagance on the way, bugging the butler with only a few questions and observations, probing just enough to set the poor girl on edge; she was obviously an apprentice, judging by how easy it was to push her around. Eventually, they came to the chamber where Zeno liked to receive guests: a small parlor decked in thick, purple curtains, furnished with naught but two ornate loveseats and a crystal coffee table. The butler bowed and scurried away, leaving him to his old acquaintance.

“Drink?” Zeno offered, raising his own goblet in demonstration.

“Sure,” Netero accepted, only to make himself feel as though he were congenial; Zeno was far removed from such sentimental trappings—the ancient companionship of breaking bread in company—so it meant nothing to him, either way. Still, Netero liked to go through the motions.

So another butler pushed a beverage cart into the room, and he wasted no time reaching for the humble sake he'd been drinking his entire life—the only kind of alcohol he'd ever imbibed, in fact. Netero knew that he was the only reason Zeno kept such simple mead in his bar’s rotation, and the thought made him smile just a little bit.

“I hear you’ve been squishing ants in NGL,” Zeno began. “Got too much work on your hands?’’

Netero chuckled at the pun, both of them aware of just how many hands he truly has. “I wouldn't go that far. It _is_ enough to merit some extra precaution, though. Better safe than sorry, as they say.”

Zeno made a noise of agreement. “Of course. So who’ll it be? My son’s been itching for a worthy assignment.”

“I'd like it to be you, actually.”

“Heh, extra precaution, indeed,” Zeno remarked. “I hope you're ready to pay out of pocket, because I doubt the Association Board will finance such an expensive purchase.”

“I'm prepared to shoulder the cost,” Netero evenly replied. “However, I also expect you to contribute some other family members to the cause. And I also expect them to be free of charge.”

“And why would I ever do that?”

Netero’s smirk grew just a bit wider; Zeno raised a leery eyebrow. Hook, line, and sinker.

“How else are you going to save your grandson?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11:18 on Saturday, hmmmmmm. Good enough, I guess

At three in the morning, Kite listened to the creaking of the bed and the light sweep of feet against the carpet. A nightmare, perhaps. Just a bad dream.

“Kite?” Gon whispered from the kitchen doorframe.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?”

Gon approached the tiny breakfast table and took a seat across from him in the only other chair; Kite shifted his legs aside so the boy wouldn't collide with his overly long shins under the table.

“I woke up and can’t fall back asleep,” Gon confessed. “Usually, I just lie in bed until it happens, but right now… I don’t really want to wait.”

He knew what he was getting at. “So you want to start the day’s training?”

“Yeah!” he happily affirmed. “Can we?”

“… You didn’t sleep yesterday, either, Gon.”

The boy’s exuberance instantly evaporated, his face briefly void of any expression before surprise moved in to fill the gap. Lately, Kite had begun to notice hitches of emptiness like that—missed beats that blemished his otherwise flawless social ballet. It was a little disturbing.

“How’d you know?”

“By your breathing,” Kite explained. “These walls are pretty thin, so I can hear you breathe in the other room. And it never evened out like a sleeping person’s would, last night.”

“But then you didn’t sleep either!” Gon accused, completely ignoring the implication that Kite listened to him while he slept. Maybe he hadn’t extrapolated that far, or maybe he had but just didn’t care; either way, Kite was thankful not to address that tidbit of information.

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted.

Gon inspected him with squinted eyes, as if faced with a particularly difficult puzzle. “Say… When was the last time you slept, anyways? You’re always awake when I get up.”

The question prompted Kite to unwillingly rack his mind. He’d gotten about… an hour, the day before yesterday, hadn’t he?

“A while ago,” he mumbled. “But that’s nothing you need to worry about.”

“Why don’t you ever sleep, Kite?”

He gave a short laugh. “It’s not like I’m trying not to. It just… doesn't work. That’s all there is to it.”

Gon hummed in understanding and stood decisively up from his chair. “Alright, I’ll give it another shot. Let’s sleep together!”

“… What do you mean by that?” he tentatively asked.

“Since there’s only one bed in here, if you _were_ to lie down, you’d have to use the couch, right?” Gon questioned, brightening when Kite nodded his agreement. “Well, you’re so tall that your feet would go way off the edge if you tried to stretch out! So you can share the bed with me!”

“I’ll have you know I’m used to living without any mattress at all,” he countered. “It really makes no difference.”

Gon only shook his head. “Just try it,” he said, already set on having his way. “You should at least try.”

Kite wasn’t going to get up, but then—unexpectedly—Gon reached across the table, took him by the wrist, and pulled him out of his seat. Stooped over to accommodate Gon’s much shorter height, he let himself be led from the kitchen, eyes locked on the row of fingers that tugged him along; the warmth of his hand made Kite feel very cold, and the brownness of his skin made Kite look very pale. Like the calm before the storm—terracotta inscribed with a pewter verse—the contrast brought them both to their extreme.

When was the last time anyone had voluntarily touched him for more than a moment?

“Ha!” Gon laughed as he tumbled onto the twin-sized bed. Kite let himself fall with him, his breath strangely caught in his throat, the handprint on his arm burning at the forefront of his mind.

(It had been years.)

“Goodnight,” Gon yawned. He then managed to pull the blanket over them in spite of it getting snagged on Kite’s heel; even on an actual mattress, his feet stuck a good ten centimeters off the edge.

And although there was no way he was going to fall asleep, Kite thought it wouldn’t be so bad to just lie there for a while. To watch Gon’s unconsciousness and match it with the sounds of breathing he’d learnt over the past few weeks. Already, the boy had begun to slip away, completely unperturbed by the much larger body just to the left of him. How could he be so peaceful like this? Was it trust? Or did it simply never occur to him that Kite could pose a threat?

Did he simply not consider Kite at all?

And although here was not so different from the kitchen table, he found himself overcome by a sense of vulnerability. The air felt fragile, somehow—the silence reverent and shadows chill. Gon rolled over, but Kite didn’t move a muscle. The moment was ethereal.

So he kept the spell unbroken until he forgot there was even a spell to break, and his head felt heavy, and his eyes drifted shut, and it was only then that Kite had the presence of mind to say, “Goodnight.”

 

* * *

 

What woke him up was his inability to turn his neck. He tried again only to be restricted by a strange weight above his head that pinned him to the pillow. Sleepily, he reached around to push off whatever was in the way, but his hand landed on something surprisingly human.

“Oh, good morning!”

And there was Gon, hopelessly tangled in Kite’s hair.

“I’ve been up for a while, but I’m kind of stuck, and I didn't want to wake you,” he explained while worming his way out of the mess. Sure enough, Kite found himself on high alert at the disturbance.

“Oi, oi— _careful!”_ he growled when Gon yanked too hard at a fistful of strands. Grabbing the boy's knee to stop his movement, he slowly unwound the knot himself and extracted his prisoner.

“Sorry,” Gon said guiltily. Kite was about to forgive him, but the boy ran off before he could open his mouth.

A few cupboards clattered open elsewhere in their suite, and Gon reappeared with a wide-tooth comb in hand.

“No, you don't have to—”

“Yes, I do,” he interrupted, climbing onto the bed at Kite’s side. “I was the one who messed it up, after all. Besides, I used to help my Grandma with hers all the time.”

So Gon began to comb his hair, drawing it through the scraggly locks—a choppy jungle of split-ends and uneven lengths, the long parts riddled with the shorter sprigs, hacked off by many of his close-calls in battle. Each stroke of the comb was attentive and gentle, patient with the nest of snarls, and Gon’s free hand pet wherever the bristles traveled to smooth the segment down. Kite felt like a dog being groomed, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

It felt… really good.

“Your phone rang, by the way,” mentioned Gon.

It did? Who…?

Oh. That would be Spinner. He’d missed dinner with her, hadn’t he?

… He should care, shouldn’t he?

“Is it important?” the boy asked.

“No,” he said, making a mental note to apologize sometime later.

With that, Gon retracted his hands and moved away. Kite was surprised at the subsequent sense of loss; he wasn’t the touchy-feely type by any means, so why did he like this so much?

He opened his eyes (when had they closed?) to find Gon staring curiously at him.

“What?”

“You look really young with your hair out of your face.”

Kite raised a hand to his brow, thoughtful and appreciative. Scanning the rest of the bed, he found his hat crushed between the mattress and the headboard, pulled it out, and returned it to his head—this time with his hair tucked behind his ears.

“How old _are_ you, anyways?”

Good question. Kite himself wasn’t sure, given that he didn’t know when he was born; before Ging had found him, he’d only had a vague understanding of what a calendar was. But a date of birth had been required by the bio of his Hunter registration, so Kite had listed his birthday as the first of January and left it at that. Going by what he put on that form, he would now be twenty-eight years old, so Kite said, “Twenty-eight.”

“Woah, for real?”

“Mmhmm,” he hummed, eyeing the scuff marks on the sheets toward his feet. Maybe he should’ve taken his shoes off.

“I’m twelve.”

Kite nodded sleepily.

“Killua’s twelve, too.”

“… I figured as much,” Kite said, no longer tired at all.

“You believe that he’s alive, don’t you?” Gon asked. His gaze turned both insistent and expectant, leaning into the moment. “Don’t you?”

And for Gon’s sake, Kite decided to really, truly believe.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Yeah, I do.”

And Gon’s smile was absolutely beautiful.

“I wonder what he's doing right now,” Gon sighed as he plopped back down, his arms crossed above his shoulders to cushion his head, comfortably pressed up against Kite’s waist. “Probably something cool.”

“The way I see it, there are four main possibilities,” Kite submitted. “One: he left NGL, but he doesn't know where to rendezvous—unlikely, seeing as this is the only town anywhere near the border. Two: he thinks we're dead and gave up on us—also unlikely. Three: he's still in NGL, but he's in a compromising position and can't easily escape. Or four…”

“He doesn't know that we left NGL, and he's looking for us,” Gon finished.

The thought left both of them somber.

He sat up from the bed and plodded off toward the bathroom, Kite not far behind. After they brushed their teeth—Gon going the extra mile to gargle a swig of mouthwash—Kite took to the kitchen, put a saucepan on the stovetop, and boiled enough water for two bowls of oatmeal. He’d just placed the steaming bowls on the table when Gon emerged, the boy championing a light blue tank top and pair of grey shorts—one of the outfits Kite had bought him a few days back.

Gon scraped a chair back and began to shovel oatmeal down his gullet. “I feel like Killua,” he said fondly when he paused to take a drink of water. “He’s always wearing new clothes, like this.”

“Mm,” Kite replied, eating at a considerably slower pace.

“He always looks good,” Gon carried on. “Seriously cute.”

Kite looked up from his bowl at the odd choice of words, struck by the understanding that Gon and Killua were a couple. _That_ sort of couple. A… sexually active one. Kids sure did start early, these days.

“I'll go to NGL with you.”

Gon popped the last spoonful in his mouth. “Hm?”

“I had only agreed to fight with you in the contest, not that I would join the team if I won,” he elaborated. “So I'm just making it clear that I'll go with you.”

The boy grinned brightly. “Thanks, but I already knew you were coming.”

Even though Kite had only just decided that he wouldn't back out.

 

* * *

 

Eleven dogs in two weeks. It wasn’t record-breaking by any means, but the feat was still nothing to scoff at; usually, it took Knuckle a few more days to break the double-digits. Of course, if Shoot brought up his concerns, he’d no doubt be shouted down immediately and/or challenged to a duel, so he said nothing in regard to the number of dogs or the impracticality of supporting them. Instead, he kept his approach slow and obvious, giving Knuckle plenty of time to notice his presence.

“Yo,” greeted his compatriot from beneath the mountain of wagging tails. “What’s going on? I thought we were gonna meet only when the slowpokes got their acts together.”

“It’s about that. I have a problem with—”

“Actually, _I_ have a problem,” Knuckle interjected. “Why am I always the one on guard duty? Babysitting that stupid bulletin day-in and day-out—it’s mind-numbing! Plus, whenever Knov’s crazy bitch comes around, she pulls a fucking knife on me!”

“And what would you do with your time if it were freed up?”

“Anything else,” he groaned. “Besides, it’s not like _you’re_ doing anything important; all you’ve done so far is stalk them!”

“That _is_ important,” Shoot contended. Preparation was the most important phase of any battle, and if reconnaissance could give him an edge, then why not stalk? If it wouldn't hurt to wait, then why not hesitate?

Recklessness was what had cost him his left arm, after all.

… But now he was just making excuses for himself.

“Yeah, I get it, ya pansy,” Knuckle jeered. “Anyways, what’s your deal?”

“I’m here to tell you not to pull any punches with that kid,” he said, grateful to focus back on the original conversation. “Don’t let your pity jeopardize our mission.”

Knuckle wound his face up in irritation, all bark and no bite. “It ain’t pity! Can’t a man respect another guy’s pain without getting called a bleeding-heart?”

And there was no way Shoot was going to open that can of worms. “All I’m saying is that you better go all out when the time comes. There’s not going to be much room for error.”

“What is it you’re so nervous about? That Kite guy might be trouble, but we can probably take him if we double up. As for Palm, all we’ve gotta do is outlast her. And Gon’ll go down pretty easy.”

“I’m not so sure,” Shoot said quietly. “There’s something wrong with that kid.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“He’s a loose cannon,” he clarified. “There’s no telling what he’ll do if things get down to the wire. So it’s best if we take him out early in the fight, before he has time to do much. Is that alright with you?”

“Sure, sure,” Knuckle grumbled.

Shoot didn’t have all the information, of course; he only knew two thirds of the _who,_ half of the _what,_ and none of the _why._ But from what he’d spied over the past few weeks, compiling a mental profile for his youngest adversary…

It was like something was about to fall apart.

Something like restraint.

 

* * *

 

“Faster!” Kite barked as he ducked another blow.

Gon flew over his head, landed in a handstand, and flipped back to his feet. He _was_ getting faster (thinking faster, too), yet dodging him was still a simple matter of escaping his incredibly short range—which, admittedly, wasn’t his fault; Gon couldn’t help being so small, after all. He still had to compensate for it, however, meaning that he had to be just that much faster to fill the gap.

He launched himself at Kite once more, feinting into a sidelong kick that Kite deflected with an upward palm thrust, effectively throwing the boy up over the forest canopy. To his credit, Gon implemented his aerial rotation well when he dove back down, but again Kite redirected him, this time through a nearby tree.

“You telegraph everything through your aura,” Kite smoothly informed. “I can see your every move by watching where your Nen builds before an attack—and before a defense, too; if I can see where you anticipate my next strike, I can change my attack based on your reaction to bypass your guard.”

Gritting his teeth, Gon burst into motion, trying to get at Kite from behind.

“There are two ways to correct for this,” he continued through the assault. “Upping the speed of your aura’s flow or condensing it into a smaller area. However, Nen Concentration is quite tricky, not to mention dangerous, so I wouldn’t recommend that route.”

“Why’s… it dangerous?” Gon slowly panted.

“Well, we know that Nen is expelled from our bodies through little pores. Have you ever tried to move your aura _into_ your body?” he asked, pausing for Gon to shake his head. “Exactly. Aura works like a fluid, more specifically a gas: it likes to expand. So to reverse the direction of its initial flow would involve pushing it past the rest of your discharged aura, bunching it up against its nature. Now, this isn’t to say it’s not possible, but when you finish the technique, if you release the compact aura all it once, it’ll instantly expand out of control, generating shockwaves and heat.”

“That’s my Hatsu!”

“Not really,” Kite disagreed. “Basically, it’s a localized explosion—similar to what you do with your _Rock-Paper-Scissors_ , except with that, you just gather all your aura around your fist; the flow is what produces the force, not a released concentration. If it were concentrated, you would hold the aura close to your body—or, if you’re a master, _inside_ your body—and when you let go of it, it’d be impossible to push it out in one direction, so you would get hit by it too. That’s why compact Nen must be released little by little: so the impact isn’t strong enough to harm the user.”

“So… it makes Ren look like Ten?”

“Yeah,” he affirmed, pleased that Gon understood. “And if you’re not careful, Nen Concentration becomes Nen Detonation. Many people have died by accidentally blowing themselves up, that way.”

So Gon tried to speed up his aura charge.

 

* * *

 

And it took nine hours for Kite to grow concerned.

“We should take a break now,” he suggested.

 _“I’m fine!”_ Gon gasped, spitting out a glob of blood; he’d taken a hit on the mouth that had inadvertently made him bite his tongue.

“Come on,” Kite ordered. “Let’s eat.”

“You can go get food and bring it back here. I’ll do some push-ups in the meantime.”

He put a hand on Gon’s shoulder before he could get started. “Rest is just as important as training, you know.”

The boy whipped his head back and forth. “Only if you’re tired. And I’m not tired.”

“Would you even be able to tell if you were?”

“Of course!” he assured. “If you can make me tired, I’ll stop.”

Well, then. Kite could do that.

“… I’m going to attack, now,” he warned despite his better judgement. It would make for better training if he caught him off-guard, but somehow, that seemed too dirty to stomach.

Gon jumped back. “Then do it.”

So Kite went on the offensive and, after a brief exchange, socked the boy across the ear, smacking him to the ground. Gon somersaulted back up, oddly furious.

“You’re holding back too much!” he growled. “Now you’re not even hitting as hard as Knuckle was!”

Kite darted up to him again, but this time, Gon successfully blocked the main blow planned behind his assault. His attention had become unreal, religiously following Kite’s every move, and his Ren began to do something strange—haloing his body in a perfect circle, puffing out of him rapidly in short, star-like bursts. The feel of it was like a million needles pricking all over him, and his ears began to ring.

In a distant corner of his mind, Kite registered his phone buzzing in his pocket, and something about it bothered him. For some reason, he couldn’t reach for it, couldn’t even properly think about it; what was it that he was trying to do, again? Then the buzzing stopped, and he instantly forgot.

And Gon’s eyes had become deep and dark, a pair of black holes set like anti-diamonds in his sclera. His focus was all-consuming with its own specific gravity; his body throbbed out of tune with the world, stark against its surroundings, vivid in detail. He stood alone upon a whole other plane of existence, and Kite’s mind was forced to follow him there, pushing the three-dimensional world into a flat background. It was physically impossible to look away.

“What… are you doing?” he breathlessly asked.

Gon didn’t respond, clutching at his ears; was the ringing as bad for him as it was for Kite?

“Gon?”

He ripped his hands away from his head and rushed at Kite once more.

“Can you turn it off, Gon?”

No answer. Kite dodged the punch.

“Can you hear me?”

The boy nodded through his spin-kick, refusing to let up.

“Are you okay?”

_“First comes rock…!”_

But he couldn’t get out of the way; his body wasn’t cooperating—refused to distance himself the proper amount. Muscle memory was buried beneath the feverpitch.

_“Rock… Paper…”_

So Kite took his only other option, and just like that, Gon’s magnetism shattered.

_“ **Rock!** ”_

Kite struck him in the back of the head before _Rock_ could land, knocking the boy out cold.

 

* * *

 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he was reminded of his last conversation with Bisky; Gon had yet to wake up.

It was uncommon but not unheard-of for someone to develop a Nen ability unconsciously. And that was the only explanation—that Gon had instinctively created a new Hatsu. Most likely, he'd been applying it in small increments throughout the fight before it fully kicked in. Kite felt stupid for not recognizing it sooner, though he understood why he hadn’t.

So what even was it? Something that modified a person’s attention, rendering them unable to think about anything but Gon—and Gon, in turn, unable to think about anything but them. Did it stop when the user fell unconscious? No, that wasn’t it; the effect had disappeared at the moment Kite planned the finishing blow in his mind, before he had actually attacked. Why was that? What was special about that moment? Was it because, at that point, the fight had been over from his perspective?

The more he mulled it over, the more convinced he became. The ability ends when the target becomes satisfied with the outcome of the fight—or when the user becomes satisfied, maybe. Whichever came first.

That… was a dangerous power. It made retreat impossible and battles with multiple enemies a deathtrap; he probably wouldn't even notice an attack from anyone who wasn’t his target, let alone react to it. He also wouldn’t be able to interact with any allies or gain new information from them. Elaborate plans flew out the window, as well as anything that involved misdirection. Granted, it would usually place Gon at less of a disadvantage than his opponent (given that his fighting style was already predisposed to direct confrontation), but against anyone significantly stronger than him, it basically ensured his death.

And if neither person could be satisfied, would it just… go on forever? If Gon killed his opponent but didn’t accept the outcome, would he be left staring at a corpse for all eternity?

Nothing would ever be worth that risk.

And what category would this even fall under? Manipulation? … No. This was Specialist. And Gon was an Enhancer—literally on the opposite side of the spectrum.

What kind of mental stress has he been under for this to occur?

“Ughhh,” Gon moaned as his eyes fluttered open.

“Do you know what that was?” Kite asked.

The boy nodded slowly.

“Never use it again.”

He gave another nod.

“… Honestly,” Kite sighed. “You’re nuts.”

Another nod.

“What do you want to name it?”

“Killua,” he croaked, because he couldn’t think of anything else.

Kite’s hands clenched in his lap, and another name came to mind:

_1v1: Final Encounter._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, on the last chapter, I got some good questions about Gon's age. Here's my evidence for him being 12 during the chimera ant arc:
> 
> http://mangaseeonline.us/read-online/Hunter-X-Hunter-chapter-220-page-10.html
> 
> http://mangaseeonline.us/read-online/Hunter-X-Hunter-chapter-316-page-7.html
> 
> Check out the comments on the last chapter if you want to see my convoluted explanations for why it might be possible for him to still be 12 at this point.
> 
> ALSO, for those of you who don't know, I changed the font of Palm's speech due to troubles reading it on mobile. So now she talks like everybody else. Sighhh

 

> I’m Ready—KNUCKLE  
>  I’m Ready—Shoot       **TEAM**
> 
> Ready— _Palm_
> 
> I’m Ready—Kite  
>  I’m Ready—Gon    **Team**

 

* * *

 

“Stay aware of your surroundings at all times. Expect to toggle opponents frequently, even though you don’t want to. Conserve stamina above all else; you don’t have to knock anyone down, remember. All you have to do is survive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if the situation ever becomes two-on-one, I’ll come over to back you up, alright?”

“Yup.”

“And I know you said that you wanted Knuckle, but if you feel overwhelmed, it’s fine to ask for help, you know? So just shout, and I’ll—”

“Kite. It’s okay.”

 

* * *

 

Knuckle walked a bit further into the open, grassy field and asked, “Think this is far enough?”

Shoot gave a near imperceptible nod as he checked the others for their reactions. “No objections.”

So they jumped a ways back from the rest, Gon and Kite following suit in the opposite direction, Palm sandwiched between the two duos. Knuckle dug a small timer out of his pocket before shucking his coat to the wind, the white fabric fluttering away despite its obvious weight.

“Thirty minutes. Winners are whoever’s still standing,” he called out to them. “We good?”  
  
Palm jerked her head in approval, and Kite waited for Gon to follow suit, but the boy… did nothing.

“… No problems here,” Kite eventually said for him, which seemed to snap him from his daze.

“Let’s go.”

Knuckle set the timer on the ground; Gon crouched into a fighting stance at Kite’s side, strung as tight and thin as a whip.

“Time starts… NOW!”

Kite was only able to spare Gon a glance as he braced himself for Palm’s immediate onslaught. Her aura clashed at the edge of his own, pushing for territory with every grasping lunge, harsh and overbearing against the frontier of his senses. He could _feel_ the weight behind the punches he dodged, the hostility palpable in every fist whooshing past his ears; she really, really hated him, didn't she? Intently watching for a gap in her motion, he found himself stuck in an evasive maneuver that just went on and on. Needless to say, it was a handful.

Skidding across the ground, Gon crossed his line of sight with a pair of bruised forearms held in front of his face. Shoot came up behind him to throw a punch, three disembodied hands weaving through the air—Conjuration, emphasis on Manipulation—only for Gon to pivot at the last second and dodge by a hair’s breadth. Knuckle rushed forward to intercept his swerve, but Gon’s Ryu was ready to cushion the blow, but Shoot’s hands then pinpointed his aura’s consequent weak points and moved in to strike. Kite needed to help him—he’d promised to help him—but Palm just would not let up.

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

And what the hell was that white, fairy thing?

“At least let me explain, Shoot,” Knuckle demanded irately. “Listen, kid. That strength you’re feeling? It’s from the aura I just lent you, and I charge ten percent interest… every ten seconds. When your borrowed aura plus interest surpasses your current POP, you’ll bust. Your POP is…”

And Kite tuned out the rest as he deflected the thrust of a knife—where had she been keeping that thing?—and finally found his opening; he landed a solid uppercut to her jaw followed by a side kick to her sternum that knocked her away. Seizing the moment, Kite rounded toward Shoot to gain his attention—

“ **GE T BAC K HERE, YO U BASTARD…!** ”  
  
And Palm was already back on the move. Everything about her was hard to deal with; her vicious attacks called for a tedious degree of caution, and her tenacity was enough to hold her through a fair bit of damage. Not only that, but she was an Enhancer, which meant she wielded her aura with a wicked ease, her Ryu outpacing him despite Kite having the advantage in physical speed. She may not have had nearly as much aura as he did, but damn if she didn’t use it effectively. And he didn’t have time to just let her run out of gas.

 _“First comes rock…!”_ Gon chanted a ways away.

As he ducked another crazed swing of the knife, Kite was sorely tempted to get out _Crazy Slots_ and end it right then and there. However, in spite of his difficulties, he knew it was too risky; his Hatsu was purely designed to kill—could hardly ever be used in non-lethal ways—and he didn’t actually want to murder anyone here. At the end of the day, they were all technically allies.

“YO!” he heard Knuckle shout at him. “Ain’t you gonna help your buddy? He’s facing me n’ Shoot, over here!”

Kite knocked the wind out of Palm with a sucker punch to the gut, grabbed the blade from her fingers, and left her gasping on the ground as he ran for Shoot. And Gon… did not look good.

Taking the knife had been a good decision, he soon came to understand; facing the hail of conjured fists would’ve been difficult if he had only his two hands to work with. Kite skillfully slashed through every barrage, pushing out a bit of En to cover his blind spots, and immediately whipped his head around to get a better look at Gon.

And the discrepancies his En had felt were represented by a black mist that ran up the boy’s hip and upper arm. Was that Shoot or Knuckle’s work?

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

And the fairy thing had gotten huge.

Kite focused back on Shoot, curious at his relative immobility thus far, and saw a prominent limp in his right leg; that was where the _Rock-Paper-Scissors_ had gone, it seemed. Now, if Kite could only push past the hands, he could easily take out Shoot and begin to work on Knuckle…!

Gon’s body suddenly hurtled toward him from the right, and Kite grabbed him before he hit the ground. The mist was cold to the touch—textureless yet surprisingly firm, like a spongy blast of frozen wind—and as he set the boy on his feet, he noticed the jerky movements of the afflicted areas, as if trying to work around unresponsive muscles. It was safe to assume that Gon was no longer able to fight at full capacity.

That was fine. Kite would help him through it.

Shoot fell on him once more, and it was much easier to predict the path of his attack now that Gon was there to parry some of the blows. With a lightning-fast arc of the knife, he speared all three hands at once, piling them up on the blade like meat on a shish kebab. Shoot didn’t so much as twitch, so he probably didn’t feel it—which was to be expected, given how difficult it was to furnish a Nen construct with tactile reception.

Maybe Kite should start carrying a regular katana, again. He’d forgotten how nice it was to fight with a sword that wasn’t screaming at him.

“WATCH OUT!”

He’d already known that Knuckle was charging at him, but he appreciated Gon’s concern nonetheless. The hands slipped off the knife without a scratch on them and parted ways for Knuckle to jump through the gap; Kite deftly skirted the oncoming kick and blocked the subsequent punch.

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

> 320 → 352

And now he had a fairy of his own.

“You’ve gotta hit him,” Gon panted. “Don’t let… the number get high. If you hit him, it’ll go down.”

Kite didn’t waste time, pushing Knuckle back with his attack to avoid the storm of fists that gave chase. Gon used the moment of free time to charge his Hatsu _(first comes rock…!),_ and Knuckle tensed up in alarm as Kite scored a few blows (using the blunt side of the knife, of course).

_“ Uh-oh!”_

> 352 → 0

_“Rock… Paper…_ **_Rock!_** _”_

Knuckle dodged it as Kite’s fairy disappeared with a pop. Gon’s, on the other hand, still loomed ominously over the battle, hovering a centimeter above the grass.

“Once more!” Gon roared, cocking his fist as Knuckle struggled to regain balance. “ _Rock… Paper…_ **_Ro_** —”

Shoot’s hands shot past Kite faster than he could intercept, grabbed Gon by his gangly shins, and ripped his legs out from under him, sending him face-first into the ground. The orange glow of _Rock_ dissolved with a sizzle.

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

Kite faced Shoot and bolted straight into the hand-whirlwind.

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

But something new lurched through his En—Palm, who tackled his feet and started _biting his fucking ankle_ —

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

Strangely enough, Shoot spared a fist from his assault to sock Palm across the eye—a show of solidarity? If he thought he could earn Kite’s mercy, he was sorely mistaken.

_“ It's time. Adding interest.”_

Kite punted her a few dozen meters away with his other foot, hoping to knock her out but unable to go finish the job. Slowly but surely, he was inching his way to the crippled Shoot.

_“ Tiiiiiiiime’s up!” _

And the timer began to beep.

Kite wheeled around and took a quick headcount; Gon was standing, as were Knuckle and Shoot and… yes, Palm as well. So they were all winners, it seemed.

“Sorry, Gon,” Knuckle quietly said. Wide-eyed, Gon fell to his knees—a strange, purple cat hanging off of his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

The phone was unusually heavy in his hand as Kite watched the screen darken from disuse, dimming to a flat grey before dropping into black. Gon was curled up in bed, from what he could hear, but Kite still felt compelled to check on him.

Despite technically having won the match, now that he was without Nen, he wouldn’t be allowed into NGL.

And there he was, staring up at the ceiling.

What could he say to him? Something comforting, invigorating—encouragement, apology? Kite searched for the words but, as always, came up with nothing, leaving him mute and so very sorry.

“I’m weak, Kite.”

 _Not true,_ was the first phrase that came to mind, but it died out in his throat. The next was, _it’s okay,_ yet that was still inaccurate. And the _so am I_ would do no good.

“I’m so weak…!”

He sat down beside him, and Gon thankfully initiated the next step by resting his head against his side, making it easier for Kite to wrap an arm around his shoulders and press his nose to the top of his head. He smelled like dirt, grass, and pine needles; his tears were hot as they bled into Kite’s shirt.

And the next part was going to be so, so hard.

“I’m not going to NGL.”

Gon froze mid-sob.

“W-what?”

Kite let his silence speak for him.

“B-b-but…” Gon stammered, panicky and dismayed. “But what about Killua?”

But what about Gon? Who would protect him while Kite was gone? The only people he knew here were Spinner and the rest of the Kakin Exploration Team—and they couldn’t even use Nen. And now _Gon_ couldn’t even use Nen, so for the duration of the mission (which could last anywhere from a day to a month), if Kite wasn't there, he’d be totally defenseless. What if he did something stupid, and what if he got into trouble? Who would save him, and who would talk him out of it? What would Kite do if he returned to find him missing or—or dead? What would he say to Killua? Or to Ging? Or Bisky?

Or himself?

_(Listen. I know you’re Ging’s lackey, and I know he doesn’t really do long-term relationships, but you have to stay here for Gon, okay? If you don’t look after him, no one will.)_

“No, Kite,” Gon whimpered, grabbing hold of Kite’s arm to accent his plea. “You have to go look for Killua!”

The task force could do that without Kite’s help; it wasn't like there wouldn't be a search party if Kite didn't tag along.

“… Then you’d be left alo—”

“That doesn’t matter!” Gon fiercely rejected. “Killua’s in much more danger than I am! He needs you, Kite!”

_(If you don’t look after him, no one will.)_

“Please,” he begged. “Please, for Killua…!”

Oh, Gon.

“I can't.”

And he watched something crack behind the lens of his hazel eyes.

_“Then get out.”_

Kite left the room, took a seat at the kitchen table, and welcomed his depression.

 

* * *

 

Pitou was bored, Shaiapouf could tell. Thoroughly stir-crazy.

“A… familiar. No, something more tricky—like a trap.”

Stir-crazy and at a loss for what ability to develop.

“Nyaaaaa…!” it warbled, kneading its claws into its scalp. “Why is this so difficult?!”

Pouf strung out a heartbreaking note that wavered for a moment before its collapse. “You’re thinking too hard about it.”

“But how else am I gonna figure this out?” Pitou asked as it stretched over the linoleum floor of the palace. “How’d you invent your own powers, anyways?”

“It came to me naturally,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “Well, most of it did.”

In order to accelerate the Selection of their human-chimera ant army, they needed to control the soldiers of East Gorteau, so Pouf had adapted his Hatsu to fulfill this requirement. In addition to mind-reading, he now had the power of mind-control at his disposal—provided the target had inhaled enough of his wing scales, of course. The ability also gave him a limited control over the target’s cells, allowing him to unblock their Nen pores so they could deliver the forceful aura-awakenings of the Selection.

 _Subliminal Message: Sylvan Earworm._ No one but Pouf knew the name.

“I wanna fight,” it sighed. “A good fight, like that one from before…!”

“If another strong intruder appears, you should let Youpi handle it,” he chastised. “You lost the body of the last one, after all. I’m sure the King would’ve much enjoyed eating it.”

“It’s not my fault it blew up!” Pitou defensively objected.

“All the same, had you been more efficient, it would’ve never received the opportunity to do so,” he countered.

“Haaaah,” it moaned. “Tell me what my Hatsu should be.”

Thought like this required another sonata. “Healing would be useful,” Pouf mused as he bowed the first phrase, fingers waltzing over the violin’s fingerboard.

“Healing… Yeah… Alright!”

 

* * *

 

The door creaked open.

“I’m going to see Knuckle off to NGL,” Gon said. Kite could infer the unspoken dare behind his words: _And I’d like to see you try to stop me._

“I’ll go with you,” he quietly offered.

“… Fine.”

So they walked to the dispatch site in a tense silence. The truck was already revved up and ready to go, with the front seats occupied by Knuckle, Shoot, and Stick, Palm sitting by herself in the back. Knuckle had no problem with them hopping in the cargo hold, though he wouldn’t have had the right to stop them even if he wanted to; it was Stick’s truck, after all, and he wasn’t going to be refusing Kite anytime soon. And as Kite opened the back doors, he found someone already sitting inside: a young man with long, black hair, his green vest dotted with yellow pins.

“Oh,” Gon said, something cynical about the way his eyes narrowed. “I was wondering when you were gonna show up.”

The man said nothing, and Gon climbed onto one of the benches lining the wall. They obviously had some history, and despite Gon’s apparent fearlessness, something about the stranger set Kite on edge as he joined them in the truck. Maybe it was the utter blankness of his face, or maybe it was the way his breathing made no sound, or maybe it was how his dark eyes followed the boy's every move. All Kite knew was that he didn't want Gon to sit directly across from him, so he gently nudged the boy further down the bench.

“Though, I didn’t think I’d meet you like this,” Gon continued. “After all, you’re only here for Killua, right? You don’t care about all the people getting eaten. So why bother joining the extermination team?”

“The Chairman has made it clear that this is the only way to enter NGL,” the man answered; his voice was as unsettling as the rest of him, the intonation painfully artificial in the way it mimicked a normal human cadence.

“After you find him, I’m going to take him back,” Gon claimed. “And then I’m never going to let you see him again.”

“… What did Killua look like?” the man asked.

“Wh—”

“When you abandoned him to certain death. What did he look like? Was he scared?”

And there was no way Kite was going to let that slide.

 _“Hey,_ ” he interjected, his timbre dropping into something low and dangerous. “I'm the one who did the ‘abandoning,’ you know. So if you’ve got a problem, take it up with me.”

For the first time, the man turned his eyes on Kite. “Like that changes anything.”

Gon’s hands began to tremble. “How dare you,” he whispered. “After everything you’ve dONE TO HIM, YOU ACT LIKE YOU CARE…?!”

And Kite actually had to restrain him.

“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO BE HIS BROTHER,” Gon spat.

“And what good has his ‘friendship’ done for him?” the man evenly replied. “If he hadn't run off with you, he would’ve never gotten into this mess. Do you, then, deserve to be his friend?”

Gon stopped struggling against Kite’s arms, going slack in his grasp.

And Kite actually had to restrain himself.

“Anyone can see that Killua loved being with him,” he honest-to-God growled. “Don’t talk about friendship if you don’t understand what it is.”

“Oh, I understand,” the man said, a vile aura coming up around him as he eased up on the reigns of his bloodlust. Kite’s aura was there in an instant, sharp in a way it usually wasn’t—aggressive in places it was usually passive.

And right before the first punch could be thrown, the truck lurched to a stop.

“… Are you going to let me through the door?” the man asked.

“Get out,” Kite snarled under his breath.

He left.

“Don’t listen to that bastard,” he vehemently urged the instant the door shut, setting Gon back on the bench and trying to meet his eye. “It was not your fault, you hear me? _It was not your fault.”_

Gon’s voice was flat and dead as he said, “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION: do you guys find it a chore to read through fight scenes? Because I can shorten them up if that's the case.
> 
> Also, shit goes down next chapter. Prepare thyself


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a day early (or two days, depending on where you live), but I couldn't resist posting the chapter now that I've got it finished. So..... enjoy

For one week, they led parallel lives—close but not intersecting, the other side unacknowledged. Gon spent his time at the gym, charming the hearts of all the locals fortunate enough to earn his company, and Kite shadowed him from afar. So for that week, he didn’t speak at all.

One time, he accidentally caught a glance of himself in a mirror (something he usually avoided) and faltered when he recognized the reflection as himself. Kite had always been on the thin side, but this… was a little much. The emaciation could no longer be played off as athleticism; he looked positively awful from every angle, his cheekbones jutting sharply out from his face, dry skin an anemic shade of white, lank hair falling lifeless on his shoulders. All Kite did was pull his hat down over his eyes and keep on walking.

Gon looked fine, he often noted. He looked healthy. He looked happy.

Sometimes, Kite heard him cry himself to sleep, but he couldn’t work up the nerve to go talk to him about it. The longer he went without speaking, the harder it was to break the streak.

He felt like they were dying.

That’s why, when his phone finally rang, he skipped the _hello_ and immediately asked, “Did you get Killua?”

 _“Well,_ ” Knuckle’s voice said over the line.

Kite held his breath.

_“We’ve got good news and bad news.”_

And his chest tightened even further.

 _“The good news is that the new guy_ — _Illumi_ — _f_ _ound a hole in the ground of where they stored humans. He says it’s a common assassin technique to jump in a hole you dug, cover it up with dirt, and sleep for a long period of time_ — _something Killua supposedly knows how to do. It's deep enough underground to get out of range of the Royal Guard’s En, so he would’ve been safe from that. And there’s evidence of a human living inside it, so it was probably him. A DNA test is being run on some white hairs we found to confirm.”_

“And—” His rasp was cut off by a sudden bout of coughing; he tasted blood at the back of his throat. “And the bad news?”

_“The hole’s empty. There’s no one inside. We don’t know where he went.”_

“But there aren’t signs of a struggle, are there?” he asked, his tone growing desperate. “He wasn’t forcibly removed from the hole, right?”

_“… It’s hard to tell a thing like that. The surrounding area has seen a lot of traffic, so most of the potential evidence has been displaced or covered up.”_

Kite didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t slept since Gon had stopped talking to him.

_“Anyways, there’s some more stuff to discuss, but it’ll be easier to talk it over in person. We’ll be back tomorrow and debrief you then. Oh, and the Boss wants to recruit you.”_

“I already told you that I can’t leave Gon.”

_“He wants to recruit Gon too, though.”_

Oh. That was a different story, then.

_“Tch, what am I doing? I said I’d tell you everything tomorrow. Save your questions till then.”_

 

* * *

 

The next day, they watched the dirt road until they could make out a cloud of dust kicked up in the distance. The air was heavy with pending rain, the evening sky dreary and grey. As soon as the truck braked to a halt, Gon jumped forward, opened the passenger door, and launched his interrogation.

“How long was Killua in the hole? What did he eat or drink? Was there enough air? Did he sleep the whole time, like a hibernating bear? Was there room to stretch out? Did you check to make sure he didn't dig a tunnel? Did he leave any messages?”

“Hell if I know,” Knuckle grunted, a little off-put by the kid forcefully situated in his face. “And there weren’t any tunnels or messages.”

Visibly deflated, Gon stepped back to allow him to exit the vehicle. “Well… I’m sure he made it out alive!”

Knuckle seemed skeptical but wisely kept his mouth shut after seeing the look Kite shot him.

“But there's one other big thing we encountered,” Shoot added, making Gon perk up in attention. “The Chairman was strangely insistent that we tell you.”

“What?”

“We found evidence of a Nen Detonation, and a bloody huge one at that,” Knuckle revealed. “A Nen Detonation results from a botched Nen Concentration, which is—”

“I know what it is,” Gon interrupted. “What about it?”

“Well, it was big enough to completely obliterate the user’s body. All that's left is this,” he said, digging something out of his coat pocket.

And what he pulled out was a familiar white glove. Tattered at its frilly edges, speckled with blood stains and burn marks.

And Kite's blood froze in his veins.

(She had been gone for a month, after all. There was no reason for the trip to take that long.)

“We think it belonged to someone called Biscuit Krueger,” he said. “Don’t know how the hell she got in the country—they’re still looking for the security breach—but she managed it, and then she blew herself up. There’s no way any human could’ve left a carcass after that explosion, let alone survived it. I guess she must’ve been cornered, in the end.”

Kite looked down at the pink lipstick smudge on his sleeve, still visible from where he’d wiped off her goodbye kiss.

“Bisky's… dead?” Gon whispered.

“Looks like it.”

He shook his head vigorously. “But that's impossible,” he stated, his voice rising with the strength of his conviction. “She wasn't even in NGL. She was at Headquarters. She…” He trailed off as he looked up at Kite for confirmation, and it dawned on him all at once. “Kite, you… lied to me?”

“She asked me to,” he said very quietly. “We didn't want you to worry.”

“But she’s not… Sh-she’s not… Can’t be…”

“She did a brave thing,” Shoot remorsefully observed. “Destroying herself so the Queen couldn’t harvest her body.”

“I-I-I-I—I-I-I—I,” Gon stuttered.

Faced with the imminent breakdown, Kite made a snap decision: he picked Gon up and brought him back to the inn.

 

* * *

 

Tears were falling by the time the door slammed shut.

“She’s not dead—she’s not dead—”

Kite sat them down on the doormat and drew the boy into a fierce hug. Physical intimacy was not his strong suit, but after the week of isolation, the full-body contact felt really… right.

“I’ll kill it,” Gon hissed against Kite’s bicep.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, okay.”

“Let go of me, Kite.”

He shook his head.

“I said, _let go.”_

He held him closer to his chest, a large, bony hand cupping the back of his head, the other nested between his shoulder blades.

Gon began to push back. “I’ll kill it, Kite! I’ll kill it!”

He just tightened his arms in response. “Not right now.”

“No— _no,_ I-I-I’ll…!”

Gon stopped struggling and instead clung to Kite for dear life, his boyish legs locking around his waist, little hands fisting the fabric of his shirt.

“She’s _not,_ ” he choked. “She can’t…!”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Kite whispered.

And that’s when Gon began to really, truly cry.

“I w-was gonna bring Killua back for h-h-h-h-her, not the other way around,” he sobbed.

Kite swallowed and shifted his hips awkwardly.

“H-how could you let her go, Kite? How could you let her w-w-w-walk into that place with… with those _things…?!”_

And that’s when Kite got up, set Gon down on the kitchen countertop, and rummaged around the refrigerator for the vodka that the innkeeper kept in stock. This was not like him. He did not usually drink. But he still pulled the bottle out with a cold _clink_ and poured enough for nine shots, downing it in one go.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Gon stared at the bottle with an odd expression, cheeks painted with stagnant tears.

“Rhubarb margarita.”

“What?”

“Bisky told me that… that her favorite drink was a rhubarb margarita,” Gon breathed, and the memory had him drawing his nails down the sides of his bare arms.

Kite took to the pantry and scoured its contents; there wasn’t any rhubarb, but he _had_ seen some strawberries in the refrigerator. Did they have a blender…? No, they did not. Using the flat of a kitchen knife, he crushed the strawberries into a fine paste and siphoned the juice off into an empty cup. Did they have tequila…? No, they did not. Kite poured a mix of vodka and water into the glass and stirred it with the knife.

And then he got a bad idea.

“Do you want to try some, Gon?”

Because he wanted to drink with him. To induct him into this portion of manhood. And maybe it would calm the boy down.

Or maybe he just didn't want to drink alone.

“Miss Mito s-said I can't have alcohol until I'm eighteen.”

Kite would not press the issue, even though he wanted to. He would not pressure him.

“But I’ll… I'll try it,” he brokenly gave in; the scratches on his arms were long and red.

So Kite retrieved another cup and poured half of his drink into it. “To Bisky,” he said, raising the glass for a toast.

Gon let out another dry sob and slowly met his cup to the tribute. “To Bisky…!”

From the look on his face, Gon obviously did not enjoy the taste—and it _did_ taste awful, Kite found as he took a swig of his own. It was a good kind of awful, though. A good kind of hurt.

“Here,” he offered, extending his hand. After a beat of incomprehension, Gon handed him his glass, and Kite channeled some Transmutative Nen to sweeten its contents. “Better?”

Gon nodded as he chugged, his Adam’s apple bobbing almost hypnotically. Wow, look at him go. Kite finished off his cup to keep up with him.

“Ready for more?” Kite murmured.

“Y… yeah.”

So Kite prepared another two drinks. Gon’s cheeks were flushed a pretty shade of red, he noticed. He really was a handsome boy; Kite could see why Killua liked him.

“Before Bisky left, she asked me out on a date for when she got back,” Kite said, staring into the murky pink of his glass. “And I would've done it, too. I was going to say yes. I told myself that when she got back… I was going to say yes.”

“Kite…”

He cleared his throat. “This isn't actually a margarita, you know. We need tequila for that.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Between vodka and tequila? Everything,” Kite slurred. “Tastes a world apart.”

Gon's pretty eyes were half-lidded, and he seemed reluctant to drink any more, so Kite took the cup from him and belted the rest himself, Gon looking on with a note of bewilderment.

“Do you… wanna… want me to go buy us some tequila?” he asked. “Then I could show you what a _real_ margarita is like.”

“Okay,” Gon hiccupped.

“Alright. I'll be back soon,” Kite promised. He absentmindedly pressed a sloppy kiss to Gon's forehead on his way out. “Wait for me.”

And it was raining outside, Kite realized as the wind slapped against his face, his hand reflexively clamping his hat down to his head. This was good news, since it meant there wouldn't be many passersby to notice him totally hammered. Still, he wanted to keep up appearances, trying to walk in a straight line—he wanted to walk in a straight line—but he couldn't tell if he was doing it right.

“Kite?”

Oh. Spin was there.

“What are you doing in the rain without a coat? You're gonna catch a cold!” she called out to him.

Kite had left his coat in NGL.

“Kite…?”

He had left Killua in NGL.

“Hello?”

He had led Bisky to her death.

“Come on,” Spin said, tentatively taking him by the arm. “Let’s get you out of the rain; my hotel’s right over there.”

Kite let her lead him through the front doors, up a few flights of stairs, and into a small apartment. It was comfortably warm inside, and something about it made him sick.

“Holy shit,” Spin uttered. “You’re drunk.”

She had only just now noticed?

“What's wrong, Kite?”

“What's wrong?” he echoed. “You really don't know?”

She looked confused.

“God,” he laughed. “You've got such a—a _small_ mind. Such a narrow outlook. You really don't get it.”

Spin obviously didn't know how to react to that.

“Always chasing after me,” he muttered. “Always making everything awkward and complicated…!”

“Uh…”

“Always making me worry about how to let you down easy, stepping around your _stupid_ little crush…!”

“W-wait—”

“Making me feel like a jackass for not reciprocating—for not caring!” he shouted, bloodshot eyes wide with a sudden fury. “Like I’m heartless! Like I'm a bad person! Well, it might be news to you, but _I don't want to hurt you!”_

And he hated Spin for making him hurt her. Because he could not be who she wanted him to be.

“I… I know, Kite,” she whispered. “I know you don't want to hurt me.”

With a resounding crack, he slapped her across the face to prove his point: because she stayed, he had to hurt her. And in the back of his mind, he knew this had to happen now. It had to be now, or else he ran the risk of snapping around Gon—or, even worse, _at_ Gon. It had to be Spinner, because she was complacent. She would just sit there and take it.

“It's okay,” she said softly, her head still turned ninety degrees from the backhand.

“No, it—it’s not,” he faltered.

“This is about Killua, isn't it?” Spin guessed. “You found out that he’s dead, didn't you?”

And now she was _really_ trying his patience.

“How dare you,” he lowly rasped. “Just deciding that he's dead—how the hell could you claim to know something like that? Do you have any idea what you're saying?! _What that would mean?!”_

“It means that you have to get over it, Kite.”

He slapped her again, harder this time, throwing her to the floor.

“Shut. Up.”

And that's when he noticed what she was wearing: a grey camisole and pair of jeans, both completely drenched from the rain. The thin material clung tightly to her body—from the curve of her hips to the individual swells of her breasts—leaving nothing to the imagination. Her ropy hair fanned out like a splash of blood on the tile floor, and the forest green of her bra straps was stark against the pallor of her clavicles.

“It's okay,” she whispered. “Take it. Let me help you.”

“You—you’ve got to be kidding me,” he laughed incredulously. “You want me to fuck you?—fuck you while Gon's waiting for me, probably crying his eyes out?”

And maybe he wanted to.

“Fine,” Kite muttered, yanking her up from the floor. “Fine.”

So she peeled away her jeans while he fumbled with the button of his pants, and God, it felt as though his dick had been hard for centuries. He'd planned to jerk off after Gon fell asleep, but now that Spinner had shown up and was so fucking eager…

“A-ah,” she whimpered as he fingered her roughly, pinning her against the wall, and she wrapped her arms around the back of his neck.

“You wanted this,” he breathed, which was not like him, because he most definitely was _not_ a talkative man during sex. “This is your fault.”

But everything was wrong today, it seemed.

“Why?” he demanded, voice cracking, finally sticking his dick in, and _fuck—oh, fuck…!_

“Because I love you,” she weakly moaned.

“I—I didn't ask for that,” Kite choked. “I never asked for that. I never wanted that.”

And as he found his rhythm, he remembered how Bisky had looked right after she kissed him, her smile and the sunlight so warm on his face, running out and waving goodbye.

A few droplets fell on Spin’s cheeks, and Kite realized that he was crying.

“Never… never asked for…”

The lipstick stain on his sleeve.

“Didn't mean to…”

Didn't want to.

 _“Fuck,_ ” he sobbed when he finally came, burying his face in the crook of Spin’s neck. She was quiet as she held him through it; all that could be heard was the patter of rainfall and his shuddering gasps.

And when he finally came back down, Kite pulled himself out of her, put his dick away, and stumbled back.

 _I didn’t bring you along because I felt bad for you,_ Ging had once lectured him. _I did it because you were wasting your life, and I could see that your life would be a shame to waste._

“You're wasting your life,” Kite told the woman collapsed against the wall. “Find something that you want instead of waiting for me, because we are never going to happen.”

With that said, he walked out.

(This was how he mourned her, one closed door at a time.)

 

* * *

 

“Gon?” he called to the dark room, staggering toward the kitchen; the alcohol was still catching up with him, his mind keeping time with a broken metronome, the sound indistinct beneath the tides of the haze. “I'm back.”

He flipped on the light—the smell of liquor suddenly overpowering him—but Gon wasn't there, for some reason. Just as he was about to search elsewhere, he spotted a head of black hair on the floor behind the counter.

“Gon…?”

Gon was lying down. Why was he lying down?

“Gon?” he called again, trying to get to his knees but falling over in the process, landing him right beside the unconscious boy.

And the vodka bottle was totally empty.

Had… had he drunk all of it?

Kite gently shook his shoulder. No response. He shook harder. No response. He lowered his ear to the boy’s chest; his heart rate was freakishly slow.

He might die of alcohol poisoning.

With all his nerves on fire, Kite scrambled to his feet, gripping the countertop for support. How could he have left him alone? He’d promised Bisky that he would look after him, and then he wandered off to get laid? What kind of horrible person—?!

Kite was all that Gon had, and he'd abandoned him.

But there wasn't time to hate himself. He needed to call an ambulance. Where did he leave his phone? It wasn't in his pocket…? Did it fall out? Did he… leave it with Spinner…?

And the room was spinning, and then Kite blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering, Bisky was the intruder that Pouf and Pitou were talking about last chapter. If you want to know more about how exactly Bisky killed herself, refer back to Kite's explanation of Nen Concentration in Chapter 4. And the hole that Killua dug was like what Illumi did during the Hunter Exam, when he burrowed underground after he got his target's number-tag


	7. Chapter 7

_Frequently, it was cold._

_It was something he should’ve been used to by now, yet here he was, teeth chattering uncontrollably, curled up beneath a ratty blanket. Despite his attempts to keep the tail end of the blanket pinned under his heels, the force of his shivering kept shaking it off and exposing his feet to the air. His recent growth spurt had seen him outgrow his socks and pants, so his skinny ankles were entirely bare. And the hole in his left shoe certainly didn't help anything._

_What Kite wouldn't do for another blanket._

_And of course he couldn't even start a fire; apparently, the area was home to a species of basilisk that hunted by thermal radiation, so any flame would immediately paint a target on his back. Ging had been adamant that he flee if he ever encountered one, and considering the fact that he typically kept a sink-or-swim philosophy when it came to his student, for him to warn Kite at all meant that these things weren't to be taken lightly._

_Ging was not with him often._

_He had better things to do than babysit Kite, after all. Kite, who needed everything explained to him. Kite, who was such an unnecessary burden. Kite, who didn't even know how to read._

_It was with this veiled bitterness that he picked up the book and opened it to the first page. The name of it was still just “the book,” given that he had yet to figure out what the title was._ Tales of the ________; _fill in the blank. Sure, he could parse the phonetic elements of the missing word, but the sound just… had no meaning. It was white noise._

_Sometimes he came to Ging with questions, but only when it looked like he wasn't busy, which was almost never. Kite doubted that he realized the full extent of his education—or lack thereof._

_If only he could read. If he could read, then he could learn on his own without being a pest. He wouldn't need to bother Ging for basic information. He wouldn’t have to stammer through every conversation without knowing what was going on. And then maybe Ging would… would like him a bit more._

_But reality didn't work with what-ifs. It worked with facts, and it worked with people, and nobody can ever do anything about it._ If I Could Read _was but the twilight of conjecture, the no-man's-land of wishful thinking. This was one truth Kite could understand on his own._

_“Jesus, I'm starving,” came a voice from outside._

_Ging was back?_

_“Light a damn fire, already,” he grumbled. “I had you bring a matchbox for a reason.”_

_“But… what about… the basilisks…”_

_“Eh? We moved past that area ages ago,” Ging said._

_“… Oh,” Kite whispered, feeling very small._

_“I'll start the fire,” Ging sighed, fearlessly leaving the sanctuary of the tent despite his current shirtlessness. He'd gone the whole frigid day like that, wholly unperturbed by the elements; the fire was for him to cook the handful of lizards slung over his back, not to build a warm space._

_Ging never got cold. That particular weakness was Kite's alone._

_“Um… I've been… looking for the stratification…”_

_“Hm?” Ging chewed. “Speak up.”_

_“That thing you were talking about…”_

_“You're not actually talking any louder.”_

_Kite was very soft-spoken._

_“The tel,” he said. “Tel Abrim. I’m talking about Tel Abrim.”_

_“Oh, you found it?”_

_“Well, no…” Kite mumbled, vaguely ashamed._

_Ging shook his head and tore off another strip of muscle with his teeth. “Gotta look harder. It's here.”_

_And who was he to argue? Kite knew nothing, after all, so if Ging said there was a good reason to stay in this awful wasteland, then there had to be one. If Kite didn't understand, that was his own fault._

_“I, on the other hand, found the Vault,” Ging triumphantly declared. It was the other half of their mission in the Azian highlands: to unearth the Vault of Hatshepsut II, said to contain the lost idols of Novatraham._

_“Oh, good… good job,” Kite tried to congratulate. Now Ging would be waiting on him to locate the tel, and then Kite still wouldn’t be able to find it, and then Ging would probably track it down in a few hours. It would probably be so easy for him._

_Ging got up and tossed the lizard bones on the fire. “Come on. I’ll show you.”_

_Kite hurriedly disassembled the tent, packed everything in his backpack, and stood at attention before Ging’s critical eye. And then they just… stood there. Kite promptly grew nervous, looking over his shoulder to see if he forgot something._

_He felt so exposed. So clumsy and out of place._

_“Are… are we going?”_

_“Yeah, yeah. This way,” Ging drawled._

_And after twenty minutes of walking, they found the hole Ging had cut, which dipped thirteen meters into the ground until it came upon the remnants of an ancient scaffold. And then Kite saw what lay beyond the entrance: a staircase that spiraled down farther than his flashlight could shine. Ging nodded for him to descend, so Kite forged onward toward the first step—_

_—and immediately hit his head on the ceiling._

_“Careful,” Ging snickered._

_Clutching the angry welt on his forehead—and God, it fucking hurt—he made sure to duck on the next step down; at the tender age of sixteen(?), he was already head and shoulders taller than Ging, so he was the only one especially cramped. These days more than ever, Kite was uncomfortable with his height, unsure of how to pilot the lengthy sprawl of his limbs. His gangliness made him a particularly graceless teenager, and every movement often felt like a blunder on his part._

_Imagine how tall he could’ve been if he hadn’t spent his childhood starving. Really, Kite should thank his malnutrition for sparing him from his true height._

_“This is it,” he announced at the bottom of the staircase. “I’ve already disabled all the traps.”_

_The room was hundreds of meters long in all dimensions, supported by row upon row of gigantic pillars. Its walls were lined by countless balconies—a vertical labyrinth of stone—and the air was sharp with the pungent smell of earth. A new cold suddenly gripped him._

_“The idols are missing, but I_ did _find something else,” Ging said, voice echoing through the dark space._

_And in the center of the room, inscribed top to bottom with strange hieroglyphics, stood an obsidian monolith._

_“The Hatshepsut Stele,” he explained as he approached the monument. “It details the achievements of her reign.”_

_Of course Ging could read it. Ging knew pretty much everything._

_“Hatshepsut got the throne by killing her five brothers,” he recounted. “She built some cities, conquered some land, committed some genocide—typical ruler stuff. But it’s her fall from power that’s the most interesting part.”_

_“Her fall…”_

_“Yeah. She encountered a famously beautiful woman named Ahset on one of her campaigns; there are few busts of her in here, I think. Anyways, Ahset went through a lot of shit, and Hatshepsut felt bad for her, so she took her as a concubine. Long story short, Ahset got caught with some poison on her, but Hatshepsut decided to ignore the warning signs and pardoned her crime. And guess who got poisoned?”_

_“Was… was it Hatshepsut?”_

_“Yup,” he confirmed. “You’ve got the same problem as her: a weakness to sob stories.”_

_Kite hadn’t been aware, but if Ging said it was true, then it had to be._

_“You have to be smart about how you help people. If your decisions are dictated by pity alone, chances are you’re gonna make a bad one.”_

_“Okay…?”_

_“I didn’t bring you along because I felt bad for you,” Ging lectured. “I did it because you were wasting your life, and I could see that your life would be a shame to waste.”_

_He made it sound as though he’d been happy to take him as a student, like Kite hadn’t been begging on his hands and knees._

_“I'm serious!” he insisted, sensing Kite's skepticism. “You're also the sort of chump to let yourself suffer for stupid reasons, so let me just say that your life is worth more than you'll ever think it is. Don't sacrifice yourself for anybody, and I mean_ anybody, _okay? I don't care if it's your own son—hell, I don't even care if it's_ my _son—you have to remember to value yourself. Otherwise, the world is gonna chew you up.”_

_The world had already chewed him up, and he couldn't recall ever being as selfless as Ging suggested he was._

_“… How old are you, Kite?”_

_He didn't know, but he didn't want to disappoint, so he took a guess. “Sixteen.”_

_Ging nodded but didn't respond, and Kite wondered what it meant._

_“I can go look for the tel again,” Kite offered a few moments later, trying to be useful._

_“Nah,” Ging declined. “Later.”_

_What… did it mean?_

_“You wanna be a Hunter?”_

_Kite startled at the question. “Y-yeah?”_

_“What do you know about the job?”_

_“Well… you hunt for something?”_

_Ging gave a thumbs-down. “A little more detail, please.” The_ please _was sarcastic._

_Someone who hunts. Who walks with the fabulous and unknown. Who speaks every dialect of every language. Who can see things no one else can see and touch things no one else can touch. Who doesn't mind living in the Azian tundra and crossing miles of basilisk nests. Who lets ally-rat kids tag along on their grand adventures and then abandons them for months on end in an unfamiliar place. Who doesn't care about anybody, not really. Who doesn't have time to care._

_Kite was not good at articulating himself._

_“Alright,” Ging sighed. “Most people live their lives in accordance to their likes and dislikes, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. They get a job that makes them money, find a spouse to start a family, collect a few hobbies, get old, and die. And all the while, they never truly end up_ wanting _anything. Hunters are different because we have an actual goal—something that we want, something bigger than ourselves.”_

_Kite didn't really get it, but he didn't know how to ask the question, so he stayed silent._

_Ging seemed to be mulling something over. “Well, there's one exception,” he recanted. “Contract Hunters. They don't really count, in my book.”_

_“Contract Hunters… don't count as Hunters…?”_

_“Yeah. Like the name implies, they 'hunt’ for employment by various contractors, for someone to assign them any random chore. Basically, they’re just people who look to fill up their time—a little despicable, if you ask me. To be a Contract Hunter is to admit that you don’t know what to do with your life, in which case you shouldn’t be in the Hunter business to begin with. It should be a prerequisite to have your own agenda,” he scoffed._

_Ging took a sidelong glance at Kite’s blank expression and drew another heavy sigh._

_“A Hunter has something that they want.”_

_Yeah…?_

_“And Contract Hunters don't know what they want.”_

_It seemed like important information, so he repeated the words to himself as they ascended the staircase back to the surface. To want or not to want. To hunt for your game or to hunt for a purpose._

 

* * *

 

Kite’s eyes flew open.

“Gon—!”

He stood up too quickly and immediately buckled over; the surge of nausea had his face turning green. And then the headache—oh, God.

But Gon. He… wasn’t there anymore? The kitchen was deserted but for a very ill Kite, as was the rest of the inn. Why…?

Taking no time to rest, he fought through his hangover toward the door. It was already midday (going by the position of the sun), and people were bustling about on the streets, and it was so loud that everything went white for a moment—

Gon. Where was Gon?

He had to stop. Stop and think. Where would he be? How could he find him?

Kite grit his teeth and forced out his En. Should he stop to throw up? Did he have time to throw up?

Stop and think. If Gon left the inn, then he hadn’t died from the alcohol overdose. Maybe he went to find help. Maybe he was on his way back. Bisky might’ve been on her way back—

Or what if someone _took_ him? Broke into their room and walked out with Gon slung over their shoulder? He didn’t have Nen, so he couldn’t defend himself—

Stop. That was unlikely. There were no probable threats in the area. And Gon’s rate of recovery was nigh inhuman, so he’d probably woken up long before Kite had. He was fine. He was… definitely alive.

(The parallels made his heart pound even harder.)

Still, Kite had to find him. He jumped on top of the inn and traveled the village rooftop to rooftop; there were twelve hundred and seven people going about their days, but none of them were a spiky-haired little boy.

Then, a woman shrieked on the outskirts of the surrounding forest, and he dashed toward the noise only to come upon what had to be a murder scene. A closer look revealed the woman as a creature with shoulder-length blonde hair and a pink hat, resembling a normal girl but for the saturated yellow of its skin. It was one of the chimera ants that had followed the lion, he recalled—the lion he’d tracked back to the nest so long ago. It raised a disturbing question: what was a chimera ant doing out of NGL?

It tripped onto its back as another figure emerged from the treeline. A spiky-haired little boy.

"Please, I'm sorry—I'm sorry—!"

Gon approached the fallen ant and placed his foot in the center of its chest. And he was covered with a little too much blood; there was blood everywhere, actually, splashed over torn up earth and broken trees. And most of it was blue.

“Again,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“I don’t know!” the thing wailed.

Gon kicked it hard across the face and slammed the toe of his boot into its mouth; the crunch of broken teeth could be heard beneath its muffled screaming, hands clawing uselessly at Gon’s unyielding shin. As the ant struggled, it became obvious that its legs were twisted the wrong way.

How had Gon managed this without any Nen?

“Try to remember,” the boy said, lifting his foot out of the ant’s mouth (a few teeth stuck between his blood-soaked laces). “Did you get it off a human? What did he look like?”

“All… you humans… look the same…!”

Kite chose that moment to very carefully step forward. “Gon?”

“Wait, Kite,” Gon slowly answered. “I’m not finished.”

“I think you should be,” he breathed.

Gon thrust one arm above his head, and glinting in his gory palm was a silver ring set with a green jewel. “This is the ring that Killua wore to Greed Island,” he said. “And this thing _was wearing it.”_

Kite shook off his doubt. He shook off his dread. He shook off the natural conclusion.

“I just liked the way it looked,” the ant sobbed.

 _“And I’m asking where you got it,_ ” he replied, seizing its collar and lifting it to eye-level.

“I—I just… please,” the ant whimpered.

Gon pulled his fist back to strike, but Kite was there to catch it. “I don’t think it knows anything,” he murmured. “Calm down.”

They held eye contact for a long moment.

“Fine.”

And then Gon tore out the ant’s throat.

 

* * *

 

“The way we see it,” Knov said, “is that the contest was meant to determine who went to NGL, but since we’re now going into East Gorteau, you’re all free to come with us.”

The King had been born and moved to the Republic of East Gorteau along with its Royal Guard, deposing the current dictator. Pouf’s brainwashed imperial soldiers were currently administering the Selection, in which the nation’s five million citizens had their Nen pores shocked open and the survivors were surgically transformed into chimera ants. Meanwhile, the other soldier ants had scattered without the guidance of the Queen, staking their claims on the rest of the world. This was what Colt had told them, anyways.

Kite looked out the window of the speeding train; the night air was cold on his face. “You really want my help that bad, huh?”

“Tch. Things have gotten out of hand,” Morel grunted.

“Is that the only reason you agreed to take Gon? To get me on the team?”

“We’re not _that_ desperate, yet,” Knov sighed. “Knuckle and Shoot have vouched for him, and that’s good enough for us. He has plenty of his own merit.”

Gon lay in another train compartment, sleeping quietly while Knuckle snored nearby, Illumi lurking somewhere else and Palm stalking them from afar.

“Although I’m… somewhat concerned about his mental state,” Shoot admitted.

“What, that he’s a little crazy?” Morel asked, breaking into a large grin. “That’s a good thing. All it means is that when he faces his enemy, he’ll unleash everything he has.”

Kite scowled but kept himself in check.

“Anyways, what does the old man have to say about all this?”

“He sent an email a week ago, but there’s been no contact since,” Knov said. “If we don’t hear from him by today, we’re supposed to assume he’s been taken out.”

Right on time, a phone buzzed in his suit pocket. “Speak of the devil,” he remarked.

“The geezer’s got some sharp ears,” Morel grumbled as Knov held out the phone for all to see.

> Divide into three groups and draw the Royal Guard away from the King.  
>  From: the sharp-eared geezer

“… That guy scares me sometimes,” the large man muttered.

“Wait… There’s an attachment for you, Kite.”

He took the phone from Knov’s outstretched hand.

> Kite,  
>  Don’t try to hold Gon back. Now is not the time. Your focus should be on the mission.

And Kite was getting really, really sick of people wanting to exploit Gon’s rage. He wasn’t something to be _used,_ damn it. It wasn’t _good_ that he was like this.

Knov looked surprised when he immediately offered the phone back. “You read it already?”

“I’m a fast reader,” Kite mumbled and left it at that.

“That’s a weird trait to see in a field guy like yourself,” Morel observed. “You’re a Contract Hunter, right?”

Yes, he was. Kite didn’t know how it came to be, but one day, he realized that he didn’t have any particular goal in mind when he took jobs from other people, not really caring what he ended up doing. He was one of those people just looking to fill time. Without a “want.” A little despicable. A Contract Hunter. Those were the words, weren’t they?

Ging certainly could be a hard master.

“What of it?” he asked after a pause, half-expecting a fight.

“Eh? Nothing! All I’m saying is that you’re not some Association dog,” Morel clarified.

“Don’t be offensive,” Knov tiredly chided.

“Alright, just who am I offending, huh? Like Pariston’s got his lousy eye on the goddamn train—”

“In any case, who should go after which Royal Guard?” Knov interjected. “Shoot and Knuckle work well together. Same with myself and Morel.”

“I'll take Gon,” Kite said.

“… And I suppose you’ll take Pouf, as well?”

“Naturally.”

“Be rational,” came a disembodied voice—Illumi, leaning against the doorframe. “As a combat specialist, you’re much better suited to face Pitou.”

“Gon won’t accept anyone but Pouf,” Kite immediately reminded.

“Oh, he can still face Pouf. All I’m saying is that _you_ should take Pitou.”

Kite fought back his animosity, struggling to keep a neutral tone. “And who do you plan on fighting, might I ask?”

“Pouf, of course. As a Manipulator, I can better identify those of us compromised by its mind control and counteract the effect.”

“You mean, take over the body of anyone you don’t trust,” Kite accused.

Morel was similarly suspicious. “Yeah, it’s interesting that you suddenly wanna join the discussion after being MIA for most of the mission in NGL—except for Killua’s search party, of course. And your family clearly doesn’t give a damn, since they could only be bothered to spare one of you bastards for the team.”

“Grandfather saw that I would be enough to complete the mission at hand. To send any of my other siblings would be a waste of our time,” Illumi smoothly rationalized. “And what I did or did not do in NGL has nothing to do with the validity of my statement.”

“So you and Gon fight Pouf, and if you decide that Gon is ‘compromised,’ you… manipulate his body? Treat him like an enemy? Leave him to die?” Kite questioned.

“… We should all be prepared to die.”

And that was definitely _not_ the right answer.

“Hell no,” he fiercely refused. “No way am I leaving Gon with you. No way am I—”

“Wait, Kite,” Knov cut him off. “It’s not as though they’d be alone together; Morel and I are best suited to face Pouf, as well. After all, Morel has the lung capacity to avoid Pouf’s poison without Ren, and if he uses _Smokey Jail,_ then I would be best paired with him, given that my Hatsu can provide us an escape route.” He then paused for a moment. “Although… maybe that’s not the best idea. If Pouf manages to get his mind control on me, then he could escape using _Hide and Seek_ as well.”

“So just Morel, Illumi, and Gon face Pouf, and… I fight Pitou with you?” Kite slowly asked.

“Well, no. I was thinking of having Palm fight Pitou, too.”

Palm gave a little squeal from the adjacent train compartment.

“You see, we’d been planning to have Palm infiltrate the palace, but that would require her to be in peak physical form, and her injuries from the match aren’t yet fully healed. Thus, she’s available to contribute directly to the invasion.”

Sure enough, Palm still had the remnants of a black eye from where Shoot had punched her.

“And I, er, understand if you have reservations about fighting alongside her,” Knov added with an air of confidentiality. “But if I’m there, then I promise she’ll be well-behaved.”

“So that leaves Knuckle and I to take on Youpi,” Shoot surmised. “I have no problem with the match-ups.”

“Same,” Morel agreed with a pensive nod.

But none of this changed the fact that Kite couldn’t leave Gon’s side. He couldn’t. Not after everyone else had left him, too.

“Looks like you’ve been outvoted,” Illumi observed, snideness belied only by his words, tone of voice completely unchanged from its usual plastic inflection. “If you have a problem with it, you can just drop out. Gon would surely stay on the team, though, so you’d end up leaving him behind either way.”

Morel thrust his fist to his chest. “I’ll make sure Illumi doesn’t try anything, Kite.”

There was no other way.

“… Fine.”

It felt sick. It felt like betrayal.

“Gon’s Nen will return tomorrow, won’t it?” Knov asked, glad to change the subject. “We’ll set out then. Let’s get some sleep in the meantime.”

 

* * *

 

Once they went their separate ways, Kite didn’t spare his assigned quarters a second glance as he marched straight to Gon’s compartment. The door slid open, and there he was: wide awake and bathed in moonlight, wearing Killua’s ring on his left index finger.

“Hey,” Kite whispered as he sat beside him on the booth.

Gon nodded his greeting.

“You should be asleep. There are still a few hours till dawn.”

“… I miss him, Kite.”

A redundant confession, like labeling the sun with the day and death with decay. Of course he missed him. Of course he was falling apart. They were as helpless as they were predictable, like water to the tide and trees to the turn of the season—a lonely man to an attractive smile.

“I know,” Kite said, breathing in deeply. “I know.”

“I feel so lonely, all the time.”

And Kite was a poor substitute for Killua, he knew. He knew very well.

“But you’re not alone,” he murmured. “You have people who love you.”

“Not like Killua.”

Kite was fairly certain he loved Gon at least as much as Killua did, but was it okay to just go ahead and say it? Was _I love you_ too heavy a phrase? He wasn’t sure.

Instead of searching for the words, Kite chose to express himself by leaning his back flat against the wall of the train, sticking his feet out over the compartment booth and pulling Gon between his legs to rest his back against his abdomen. This way, they faced the door for when Illumi or Palm came knocking, Kite told himself as he stacked his forearms across Gon’s lap, caging the boy with his limbs. He was hypersensitive to the weight and the warmth and the smell and the _feeling,_ the contact still so new to Kite; it was liberating to just… hold him. He’d never touched anyone like this before—the occasional flings of his early twenties being the hit-it-and-quit-it sort of sex, lasting just long enough for him to blow off some steam, lacking in this breed of prolonged intimacy. But as Gon relaxed ever so slightly and let out a little sigh…

Fuck. Get your mind out of the gutter, Kite. You shouldn't be thinking about sex right now.

“I had a dream about Bisky, last night,” Gon said. Kite brushed a hand against his cheeks, but the boy’s face was dry.

“Yeah?”

“She… had a baby with her.”

“A baby?”

He didn’t answer.

“Gon?”

“… Yeah,” Gon said. “A baby.”

More and more often, he’d zone out in the middle of a conversation. More and more often, Kite felt like he was losing him.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered softly. Gon eventually did, head resting against his arm.

And what kept Kite awake that night was not his ever-present guilt or concern over Gon’s well-being. It wasn’t his meditation of the battle to come. It wasn’t his fear or doubt or apprehension.

No, what kept him up was the realization that when he’d fucked Spinner, he hadn’t used a condom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANOTHER IMPORTANT QUESTION: Do you think Kite is acting too sappy? Or, rather, do you think his sappiness his warranted by the story thus far? Because I want him to have ~feelings~, but I think I might be going overboard
> 
> Also, for those of you who don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the CA arc, [this](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/hunterxhunter/images/7/76/84_-_Hina%27s_full_body_appearance.png/revision/latest?cb=20150801141247) is the chimera ant that Gon killed
> 
> (also also, the flashback at the beginning does have some relevance to the story, btw)


	8. Chapter 8

When the stillness came, it came with a burst of pressure, the drag of suction on the air, the brief inside-out of reality’s texture. His ears popped as they gave way to the change, but it was easy to ignore; he trusted the void to take him more than he trusted his own two legs to carry him through it.

Knov sucked in a breath of air and fell against the white wall of his Nen compartment. He was here, and here meant safety. Over the course of his Hunter career, this was one certainty he’d come to depend on more than he’d like, but at the moment, it was this crutch that kept him sane. Because absolutely no one could reach him here.

“Did you set the portals?”

Kite sat cross-legged by the opposite wall. He was the only other person in the room.

“Mmhmm,” Knov hummed, unable to make his mouth form the words.

“… What happened?”

God, did the man have to take a pause before every time he spoke? The beat of quiet set him on edge—couldn’t stop shivering—and Knov suddenly needed to talk.

“Th… that aura, how did you deal with it? H-how did you—did you touch it and not… and keep going? How could anyone… keep breathing when… it’s…  it's so… that _aura,_ it’s—”

Blood-curdling.

“—couldn’t—c-couldn’t get any farther than the… oh, dear God… the central staircase. I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I couldn’t.”

“If going farther meant that you had to probe a Royal Guard’s En, then it was the right move to turn back. There’s no way you could’ve entered it and survived,” Kite replied.

He already knew that. Damn it, he already knew that. But it didn’t mean anything, in the end.

“I think it might’ve been Pouf’s En,” Knov breathed.

“… Yeah.”

That fucking pause. “How could you stand it?” he asked. “Stand being in it? And then be able to think about…” Keep breathing. “About _going back_ there?”

“Well, I wasn’t in Zetsu like you were, so my Nen could defend me some,” Kite said. “Besides that, Gon and Killua were there, and I had to protect them. I had to be strong for them.”

That’s right; Gon had touched that (aura), too. The literal _child_ among their ranks had already stood _inside_ of it and then somehow managed to breathe—managed to face the prospect of feeling it once again. Was Knov just exceptionally weak?

… No. That wasn’t it. Gon was just a weird kid; he had a certain scariness to him, a wild streak that made him a unique case. Knov recalled the boy’s own aura when Morel had asked him to prove his strength, ordering Gon to hit him with everything he had, to attack as though Morel were responsible for Killua’s disappearance.

Kite had been the one to stop him, laying one sad hand on his shoulder.

 _Sorry, Mr. Morel,_ Gon had exclaimed. _I was really… about to rip your head off!_

“I’m not going back there,” Knov mumbled, a confession meant more for his own ears than those of his actual audience. “I can’t. I can't do it. Can’t make me do it.”

It was more than pain and more than death. It was to walk off the ledge and burn up in the atmosphere, to scatter yourself on the cosmic wind. Look into the abyss, and the abyss looks into you; peek beyond your flimsy veil and know that you are nothing.

“… So Palm and I will fight Pitou by ourselves?”

“I’m sorry,” he shakily apologized, despondency leaking into his tone. “B-but I’ll tell her to control herself! Really, she’s not that bad, I swear—I really swear. When things get serious, she knows how to focus on th-the task at hand. She’s reliable as an ally.”

Kite shifted slightly, fingers drumming on the side of his arm, obviously restless. Currently, it was just him and Knov in the sanctuary of his Nen space, meaning that Gon was out in the dangerous world—which meant that Kite wasn’t able to watch over him like the paranoid bloke that he was. Though, at this point, Knov was probably the most paranoid out of all of them. Probably, haha.

“As long as she doesn’t turn on me,” Kite sighed.

“P-Palm and I have a long history. I know she’ll do what—what’s right. I remember when I first met her, _heh, heh-ehe-heh, heh-heh, haah,”_ Knov giggled, suddenly pushed to laughter; he really couldn’t stop shaking. “I found her in an insane asylum.”

“Not surprising,” Kite muttered.

“How’d _you…_ meet Gon?” he asked.

The man’s gaze wavered momentarily, taken a little by surprise at the question. “Gon?”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

A few seconds of silence passed.

“Or—you, uh—don’t have to tell me,” Knov conceded. “You don’t h-have to if you don’t want to.”

“… I met him when he was a little kid,” Kite said after the longest pause yet. “Littler than he is now, anyways. He’d gotten himself in trouble, and I saved his life.”

 _“Heh-heh-hah-h-how_ fortunate, heh.” His breath was clouding up his glasses.

“Then he told me that his parents were dead, but I figured out that he was Ging’s,” Kite continued. “They’ve got the same look in their eyes—the look of a good Hunter.”

“And that’s why you, uh… feel so responsible for him? Why you're s-so fatherly?” Knov asked; it had been bugging him for a while, the nature of Kite and Gon’s relationship. Remember how that had bugged him? Way back then, when he hadn't yet known what was lying in wait just beyond his field of vision, that (thing called aura)? When he had actually thought he could _go up against it? He had really, really thought—_

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Kite said. His eyes were hidden by the brim of his hat.

“How so?”

“Hard to explain,” he mumbled, briefly licking his lips. “He’s my… my friend.”

“Friend,” Knov hummed. “That’s nice.”

Kite shot another glance at the door.

“Are we friends?” Knov asked.

“Sure.”

Knov looked down to check his watch; it was digital, so the image was static, and he so desperately wished it were an analog clock—ticking, tocking, ticking again. He wanted to watch the movement of the hands, to see them wind their way around the minute, around the hour. He needed to know that time still moved in the endless white of _Hide and Seek._ That life went on.

“Excuse me,” said Knov as he wandered toward the exit, his bare feet leaving muddy footprints on the cold tiles. He unlocked it and found exactly what he expected: an empty room, four walls and eight corners, void of life and shape and color and sound.

Once Knov heard the click of the door shutting behind him, he collapsed to the floor and began to cry. 

 

* * *

 

Once Kite heard the click of the door shutting behind him, he staked his fingers through his bangs and let out a heavy sigh. Now he had to fight Pitou with Palm alone. Great. Fucking fantastic. Thanks a lot, Knov.

At least Gon should be back soon. He’d left to pursue some ants with Knuckle and Shoot while Kite had been off chasing his own target, the lion that had been on the news; Leol, was it called? In any case, Kite had killed the stupid thing, so now there was nothing to do but wait for Gon to return.

… It’d been a long time since Kite had saved him from the foxbear. God, why did Knov have to dredge up that old memory? He didn’t like to think of Gon as being so… weak. So vulnerable. He wanted to believe he could fend for himself.

Still, even back then, Gon hadn’t really been _weak,_ per se. There was that look about him, determined and headstrong, ready to challenge and give and receive. He’d recognized it immediately, that the boy had a _want—_ the mark of a born Hunter, something Kite happened to lack. At that moment, in the face of such a thirst for life, he’d been thrust into awareness of his own deficiency. _This is what Ging meant,_ Kite had thought. _This must be the “want.”_

Kite didn’t know what he wanted to do with himself. He stumbled through life and took what fate decided to hand him.

Whatever fate decided to hand him, be it joy or grief or a possibly pregnant woman.

Who knew when Knov would be back, and who knew when Gon would walk through the door? Who knew if Kite would even survive this whole ordeal? This might be the last time he’s ever totally alone. This might be his only chance to ask. And he really… had to ask.

Kite dialed the number and held the phone to his ear.

 _“Hello?”_ Spinner greeted through the call.

“Tell me you were on birth control.”

Something between a question and an order, edged with fear and cautious grit. It was the talk of someone with no authority, looking for a way to control the uncontrollable. Most of all, it was a plea—the element of need that composed all prayer, that drove man to compose his superstition.

_“… Would it even matter if I weren’t? Would you stay with the baby, if I had one?”_

And as always, she just didn’t get it. That he couldn’t stand to see more of himself in the world.

“Just tell me.”

It was silent on the other side of the line, and he felt his heart stall.

“Please,” he whispered. The torture of uncertainty was the duality of suspense, to be caught between desperation and resignation, hope and despair. If the fall doesn’t kill you, then the turbulence certainly will.

Please, God. Please.

_“Yes, I was on birth control. You can relax.”_

Overwhelming relief.

“Thank God,” he weakly praised. “Thank God.”

_“Is that all?”_

“No!” he laughed, flooded by a sudden high; it was the first piece of good news he'd gotten in literal months, and it left him feeling giddy as all hell. “I’ve been wanting to apologize for a long time: I’m sorry I missed our dinner date, and I’m sorry that I hit you.”

_“Oh. It’s fine.”_

“Really? That’s good to hear!” he exclaimed. “I’ll make it up to you sometime. Just let me know if you need anything.”

_“… Try to be happy, Kite.”_

“Happy?” he parroted. “Yeah, I’m happy. I’m really happy! Aren’t you?”

_“Me? I’m okay.”_

“Only… only okay?”

_“Is there a problem?”_

“Well, no. I just… would like for us to be friends, again.”

_“I never stopped being your friend.”_

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that you weren’t! What I meant was, to be better friends than we’ve been.”

_“… Yeah. Hey, I’ve got to go.”_

“To… right, right. I’ll call you later, for sure. So, um… bye, then.”

_“Bye.”_

He returned his phone to his pocket and adjusted his hat, smile verging on a toothy grin. Any second now, Gon would walk through the door, and when he did, Kite was going to sweep him off his feet and kiss him on the nose. 

 

* * *

 

Spinner put her phone away and sank deeper into the armchair. Stacked neatly on the desk beside her were two plane tickets: one for herself and one for Banana, still warm from the hotel’s printer. She was done with this place, and Banana had offered to go with her; the ecological survey had been finished for months, the team officially disbanded. They’d stuck around because Kite had stuck around, but that wasn’t enough to keep her anchored, anymore.

Kite. Frustrating, patient, good-hearted Kite. So easy to love and to idolize. The one who listened to her and Stick in their hour of need, saved her home and her swans from certain doom. After that, she’d sworn to herself—and only to herself, of course; no one else needed to know that much of her business—to stay by his side no matter what course he took. And for a beautiful while, she’d been able to keep up.

If there was one thing she was sure of in this crazy, mixed-up world of theirs, it was that he deserved happiness.

“Why did you lie to him?” Banana asked, sitting on the end of the bed. “You’re not on birth control.”

But she couldn’t be anchored, not anymore. He didn’t need her, and she didn’t need him. The world is large, and life is short, and her wings were yet untested. It was time to go. Time to fly.

Their paths would cross again someday. One way or another.

“He’s got enough on his mind as it is,” Spin answered truthfully.

She was free to roam wherever she pleased, so was it wrong of her that she only wanted to go home?

 

* * *

 

“—ain’t funny! Really! Fuck off!”

The door opened, and in came Knuckle, Shoot, and Gon, with Knov bringing up the rear—being the only one who could open the room, of course.

“No one’s laughing,” Shoot sighed while Knuckle wiped a bit of mud off the corner of his snarl, veins on his forehead fit to burst. They both congregated at the hoard of food in the center of the room, but Gon plopped down where he stood, obviously exhausted; he was covered in shallow scratches, clothes torn up and stained with ant blood. Kite’s plan to kiss him would have to wait.

“Catch!” Knuckle called as he tossed him a water bottle. Gon chugged it in three seconds flat and let the empty plastic fall from his hand.

“I’m guessing you got your target?” Kite asked.

“Yeah, plus another,” Knuckle said. “Tell him, Gon.”

Gon stared at the scabs on his knees and released a long breath. “We split up for a little while, and this chameleon thing started following me. It could turn invisible, but the smell of smoke made it easy to track. So I acted like I didn’t know it was there, and then I took its head off.”

He was quite prone to decapitation, lately.

“What about you, Kite?”

“Yeah, I got mine.”

“Sweet,” Knuckle grunted. “We’re gonna go stake out the palace with the boss, now. We only stopped by to drop off Gon, ‘cause he’s beat.”

“Alright. See you later.”

“Yup.”

Knuckle and Shoot walked out into the natural world, Knov closing the door behind them and then reopening it to a different compartment. “Call me if you need anything,” Knov said as he departed—eyes curiously blotchy and red behind the glint of his specs—leaving Kite and Gon to themselves.

Should he sit closer to him? Offer him anything? It was difficult to know how to act; Gon had become unreadable, the majority of his moods not so much expressionless more as they were indistinguishable from each other, blending into a single entity. Just as all the wavelengths of color become white when mixed together, the result of this fusion was a blank face.

And now Kite had to leave him at the most perilous point of the boy’s life thus far: confronting Pouf in what was essentially a steel cage, the burden of finishing what they started in NGL resting squarely on his twelve-year-old shoulders. God, it wasn't fair.

“… Where’s the change of clothes I brought?”

“Er, right behind you,” Kite answered. He really didn't notice the folded pile on the floor?

“Oh. Thanks.”

“W-wait, uh,” he stammered. “You're not going to change right _now,_ are you?”

Gon picked up the clean top. “Sure, why not?”

Kite could think of a few reasons, but he didn't have time to say anything before Gon pulled his tattered shirt over his head and—

Kite averted his eyes. He shouldn't be watching this.

“You're just as shy as Killua,” Gon remarked.

“Maybe you’re just an exhibitionist,” Kite mumbled, trying not to listen to the rustle of fabric, staring at the fingers cupped over his vision, counting the pulses of his heart.

He’d once given the boy a bath, but this felt different, somehow.

“Hm. You can quit your blushing, now. I'm dressed.”

He chanced a glance, and there Gon was, hair disheveled from the experience, eyes watchful in his vacant way.

“… You really shouldn't do stuff like that—getting naked in front of others,” Kite chastised. “People might get the wrong idea.”

“What, that I'm an easy lay?”

Kite buried his face in his hand, inadvertently confirming his furious blush from touching the heat gathered at his ears. Christ, did the kid have to be so blunt about it?

“That you're okay with them watching,” he softly explained.

“But it's just you, Kite. What do I have to be afraid of?”

Good question. What was Kite afraid of, exactly?

“Nothing,” he answered. “All I’m saying is that if you're around people you don’t know, you should be more careful than how you are with me.”

Gon laid down against the wall. “But I don’t know you, either.”

Huh?

“Huh?” was Kite’s lame response. “What do you mean? Of course you know me.”

“No,” Gon said as he turned on his side. “I thought I did, but then you broke your promise. The person I thought you were would never do something like that.”

“My promise?”

“To go to NGL. You promised, but then you stayed behind with me.”

… Oh. Technically, Kite had said he’d go to NGL _with_ Gon, and since Gon hadn’t been able to go, the conditions he set for the promise were void. But for Kite to bring up such a minor technicality, right now… Gon probably wouldn’t react well.

“I’m sorry,” he quietly apologized, placing himself at Gon’s mercy.

“Whatever,” the boy muttered. “I’m going to sleep. Can you let me do that, or do you have to cuddle me first?”

Ouch.

“Sorry if it bothers you,” Kite apologized once more, even quieter than the last time. The worst part was that he actually _did_ want to, even in the face of Gon’s scalding sarcasm.

“I don’t care.”

And what the hell did that even mean? Did he not care about Kite being sorry, or did he not care about having to deal with Kite’s affection? Why was this so confusing?

“When Killua’s back, you won’t be able to hang around so close to me, you know,” Gon continued.

“I—of course I know that!” Kite asserted, a little indignant. “I’m totally fine with keeping away.”

“Good.”

“… But does it bother you? When I get so… close?”

Gon didn’t answer, and Kite suddenly felt as though this was a very important moment. Like a test he was failing.

“Oh, _Gon,_ ” he whispered, the sound thick with anxiety and heartache, heavy with all the things he wished he could say. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Whatever you want, I guess,” the boy whispered back.

“Do you know how worried you make me?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you care?”

“No.”

Kite slumped down against the wall beside him. “Well, _I_ care—about you, that is. I care a lot. Is that so wrong?”

“No…” Gon croaked, face hidden beneath his arm, body turned toward the wall. Shit, was he crying?

“Hey, hey,” Kite murmured. He tentatively placed a hand on Gon’s waist and tried to roll him over, but the boy resisted. “Gon. Come here.”

“No…!”

“Come on,” Kite urged. “Don’t hide from me.”

The boy shook his head against the floor.

“Gon, would you just—” he cut himself off and turned him over forcibly, frustration getting the better of him. Gon struggled halfheartedly for a moment before giving up, letting himself lie eaglespread on his back, palms turned up toward the ceiling, tears leaking out of his empty, empty eyes. The picture of surrender.

“It’s awful, being so worried all the time, isn’t it?” Kite whispered. “I know how you feel.”

Gon sniffed and closed his eyes.

“… There is no pressure,” the boy eventually said.

“What do you mean?”

“I won't mind it if I die.”

No. No, no, no.

“Don’t say that,” Kite pleaded, gathering the boy into his arms despite knowing that he might’ve been fed up with it, that he might’ve disliked Kite touching him all the time. But fuck, he couldn’t just let him _lie_ there like that. It was too depressing.

“If I die, I'll go to hell, but I'm okay with that. I'm ready.”

“Gon, I’m serious,” he warned.

“I’ll never get to see Bisky again, though. I hope she won't think too badly of me.”

“Gon…!”

“No, Kite. Put me down.”

“Don’t you fucking ‘no’ me,” he snarled, mouth pressed to the top of his head. “You have so much to live for. So much!”

“And how would _you_ know, huh?!”

“Because I—I know you!” Kite shouted back. “You might not know me, but I know you, and I know you’ve probably got a million other friends just waiting for you to get off this godforsaken island! People who _love_ you, Gon! And we may not mean as much as Killua does, but that doesn’t make us worthless, damn it!”

Gon had nothing to say to that.

“Now listen here,” Kite demanded, lowering his head to speak directly into Gon’s ear—purposefully claustrophobic, adopting an invasive air and bending to a carnal malice; it was too close to be comfortable for either of them, but it was _good_ in a dark, hungry way that he didn’t want to acknowledge. “In three days, we’re invading the palace, and I’m not going to be with you, since I’ll be facing Pitou. So it’ll be up to you to look after yourself, and you are going to _stay alive._ Do whatever it takes to make that happen, no matter what you have to run from or who you have to fucking slaughter. You are going to keep a cool head, and you are going to keep yourself safe, because if I find out you fucking died, I swear to God…!”

Gon tore his head out of Kite’s chokehold and rubbed furiously at his violated ear, flushed red from the heat of Kite's breath.

_“Put. Me. Down.”_

Kite let him go—the boy scrambling to his feet and taking a step back from where Kite was crouched—and fuck, it was so goddamn hot in here. The space of Knov’s Hatsu lacked ventilation or air conditioning, so when his blood got pumping, there was no reprieve but for what little coolness his sweat could offer. Ripping his hat from its place on his head, he pulled off his shirt and let it join the neat pile of Gon’s ruined clothes; though less overheated, he consequently grew somewhat self-conscious under Gon’s hostile stare, and these two factors helped him regain some situational awareness.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to touch you like that.”

“Yeah.”

“You just made me a little too angry.”

“Yeah.”

“And I wanted to get the message across.”

“Yeah.”

“Gon,” he sighed, adjusting his kneel so to face the boy at eye-level. “What can I do to make you see that… that your life would be a shame to waste?”

“I already know that, Kite.”

But Kite didn’t feel like he did. “There are so many fantastic things in the world, things you’ve never even heard of. Stories that would blow your mind. Food that would blow your taste buds. So many wonderful things, and you haven’t experienced any of them yet! You can’t let it end here, not while there’s so much left to do. So you have to stay alive.”

The anger faded bit by bit, and in the wake of this change, all Gon really looked like was someone very tired.

“When all of this is over…” Kite murmured deep in his throat, taking Gon’s hands into his own and bringing them together. “We can go looking for Ging, okay? And after that, we’ll travel all over the world—go anywhere you want to go. Do anything you want to do. And I’ll show you all of those beautiful things, Gon. I promise. I promise.”

“… Yeah,” the boy quietly replied. “When all of this is over.”

 

* * *

 

Saltwater sprayed the side of Zeno’s face as he trekked across the narrow ridge, paying no mind to the crash of waves against the rockface. The sun hung low in the sky above, vividly orange in the way of the early sunset, the color playing off the choppy waters in mellow bands. No gulls or herons could be found in the area; all nearby life had long since fled from the tranquil ferocity radiating off the figure at the end of the cape. Being simple animals, they could not comprehend all the nuance of human focus, that the wrath was, in fact, directed _inward,_ and they were entirely safe from harm.

Netero was just as excited as he’d expected him to be.

“Well,” Zeno said. “It’s time.”

The golden light of worship faded away, and Netero rose from his meditation—or fell from it, depending on your perspective.

“Indeed,” he agreed. “The money’s been transferred to your account.”

With a nod of acknowledgment, Zeno formed the _Grand Dragon_ and mounted it alongside his old acquaintance.

“This might be the last time we ever see each other, you know,” Netero reflected.

Zeno snorted in professional amusement. “Of course I know.”

“Ah, I guess you do,” he chuckled warmly. “Well, in any case, it’s certainly been fun.”

Zeno thought about it for a moment and chose not to contradict him. Maybe there had been some enjoyment sprinkled in there, somewhere down the line. It was only natural.

 

* * *

 

“Ten minutes left,” Morel announced.

Kite reluctantly stood up and channeled his Nen. It was do-or-die time.

_“ YO, FUCKTARD! ABOUT TIME YOU CALLED ME. IT’S BEEN, LIKE, WHAT, TWO AND A HALF MONTHS?”_

“… That’s your Hatsu?” Knuckle asked disbelievingly.

“Unfortunately,” Kite sighed.

_“ HEY, YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR MOUTH, ALBINO. I CAN’T EVEN COUNT HOW MANY TIMES I’VE SAVED YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS. SERIOUSLY. I CAN’T COUNT ANY HIGHER THAN NINE, AND IT’S A NUMBER BIGGER THAN THAT.”_

“Just give me the damn roll.”

_“ YEAH, YEAH. DON’T GET YOUR PANTIES IN A TWIST. BRRRRRRRRR—”_

Knuckle fixed _Crazy Slots_ with an even more befuddled stare as the numbers whirled through its mouth. “Why—”

_“ **SIX!** ”_

Kite took hold of #6 and decided to answer what he knew Knuckle wanted to ask. “Yes, its… personality is part of its design. To make it stronger, I gave my ability the restriction that it'll—”

_“ ANNOY THE FUCK OUT OF HIM NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCE, HA!”_

“Yeah, that,” he muttered. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Knuckle winced in sympathy. “So this is six, huh.”

#6, the harpoon. It was one of four weapons with no gimmick attached (aside from having unlimited harpoon shots), simply being an insanely powerful version of the weapon it imitated. In an attempt to better collaborate, Kite had already explained the abilities of his various numbers to the rest of the group—with literally everyone calling #3 total bullshit. He didn’t even know if #3’s power would work, considering the fact that he’d never died before, but if it did… well. Pseudo-immortality sounded nice.

“It’s an okay roll, I guess.”

He’d have to make do, at least in the beginning.

 

* * *

 

Standing on the palace balcony, Shaiapouf felt his heart writhe in its confliction. The Selection was going well, with his brainwashed soldiers being the ones to impart his wing scales on the dumb masses outside the palace; they were so saturated with his own cells that they carried a perpetual cloud of scales around their bodies, so the surrounding populace fell to the first level of hypnosis by virtue of just being near them. _Subliminal Message_ had developed such that those under his mind control eventually converted their cells into his own, like a virus bursting free from its host. Even with his impressive foresight, he hadn’t expected his Hatsu to strengthen so drastically in such a short amount of time.

And none of this did anything to change the fact that the King was in the girl’s room.

Since the hypnosis could be left to the soldiers, Pouf was free to leave his clones at their posts throughout the palace—a habit he’d gained after the debacle with that boy, to keep his own surveillance system even while Pitou’s En flooded everything in a two-kilometer radius. With his clones keeping eyes and ears on every nook and cranny, he’d had no choice but to watch the King depart from His throne room to the den of that snot-nosed brat.

Where He’d shown concern for her injuries, called her an _honored guest,_ and now traveled to meet with her—not even having her summoned to Him, but actually _getting up to visit her Himself._

With this peculiar agony rending the fabric of his soul, Pouf was caught by even more surprise than he would’ve ordinarily been at the next two events to occur.

One: Pitou’s En disappeared.

Two: a voice boomed down from the heavens, carried to his ears by the stormy winds—

_“Dragon Dive.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION: the next chapter might be a few days late. The palace invasion is just so absurdly complicated in canon that it's gonna take some extra time to figure out how it should be organized—without Narrator-kun to hold our hands through it, that is. Just a heads up for all you lovely people :)


	9. Chapter 9

Youpi was on the stairs, and then hell rained down from sky.

Tiny golden lances, to be more precise. They rocketed through the ceiling with no care for their collateral damage, the impact sending the floor up in huge, blocky slabs, met in midair by the hail of debris falling from the roof. Even if the team managed to dodge both the rubble and the lances themselves, Youpi was another matter altogether; teeth barred in a murderous grin, the Royal Guard stood firm throughout the bombardment, jolted but not at all shaken by either the pandemonium or the Hunters drawing near.

Most important—or at least it seemed that way, being the straw that broke the camel’s back—was that the stairway collapsed. If not for the ground crumbling beneath their feet, it would’ve been more feasible (not by a lot, mind you, but they needed all the help they could get) for them to slip past Youpi in that moment of chaos. As things were, however, there was only a split-second window where that was possible—an opening that could only be reached if you literally didn’t notice the anarchy around you and kept blindly charging forward.

Gon was the only one who got past Youpi in that split-second window. 

 

* * *

 

Neferpitou hit the ground, and the ground shattered beneath its feet as it exploded into Mach speed. There was no need to take more than a single stride; it had only one destination, so getting there was a straight shot. Nothing more than a matter of wind up and release.

The crack of the sonic boom could be heard two kilometers away. The shockwaves were registered as a minor earthquake by seismographs twelve kilometers away. The frictive heat ionized enough of the air to temporarily create a magnetic field, emitting a blue-green aurora for the next three minutes.

Despite all of its speed, however, Pitou was the third to enter the room.

What it saw, it could never hope to fully comprehend.

“I’m counting on you.”

And then, for the first time in its life thus far, Neferpitou began to cry.

Because as soon as it heard those words, it knew that this was what it had been born to do. While the King departed southward with the two old men, it did not waste time summoning _Dr. Blythe_ and instigating life support. It was unthinking as it called down the scissor and scalpel arms, the oxygen mask and IV line. Nerves to nerves, muscles to muscles. A singular task, a singular motion. Save Komugi. Please save Komugi. 

 

* * *

 

“And as for you, Pouf, don’t follow me. Watch over Pitou and Komugi while I’m gone.”

As soon as he heard those words, Shaiapouf accepted that he was a traitor. Well, _accept_ might’ve been a strong word; he faced the knowledge head-on and found that his anguish didn’t drive him completely mad. And that’s all that mattered, really. That was all it took for him to act.

With the desperate vigil of a cornered animal, Pitou slowly turned to face him as his footsteps echoed to a stop. There was no need for subterfuge, no need to hide his approach. While _Dr. Blythe_ was active, Pitou was entirely helpless, and they were both very aware of this fact.

“Don’t, Pouf,” Pitou breathed.

“Ah, but I must,” he replied. “At the very least, you may take solace in knowing you did everything you could, though I know this means nothing in the face of failure.”

The King wanted the girl to live but needed for her to die. Pouf’s thought process was advanced enough to reconcile these concepts, but Pitou could not move beyond the thoughtless loyalty their biology demanded, to obey without question.

“Pouf!” it cried out, tensing up as he got close. “Y-you heard the King. He… He said… Pouf, you heard what He said…!”

“I know,” he said, steeped in a fatalistic composure. “After this is over, I’ll kill myself.”

Understanding that there was no way to reason with him, panic ripped through Pitou’s entire being. It was a shame that it let such transient whims cloud its view of the bigger picture, that the girl posed a greater threat to the King than any of the mongrels scampering about the palace. In any case, there was no need for Pitou to die just yet, so Pouf would make this as precise a shot as possible. As he took another step, Pitou crouched defensively and thrust out its Nen-less arms, prepared to use its body as collateral—

They both paused as they sensed someone coming. For Pouf, this was someone he had met once before. 

_“Do you… remember me?”_

 

* * *

 

Illumi was gone, Morel soon realized. Nowhere to be found among them as Youpi thrashed about the ruined staircase.

What. The. Fuck.

Weren’t the Zoldycks supposed to be reliable if the price was right? The old man wouldn’t have gone to them if they weren’t, so what was this bullshit about? What, did he get _scared?_ Ducked out like a coward when the going got tough? Pissed his pants and ran home? Right then and there, Morel vowed that if he made it out of this alive, he was going to hunt down that weaselly twink and wring him by his slimy neck. God, that useless little fucker…!

He narrowly dodged one of Youpi’s whip-like arms and decided to put his rage on hold. No use in swearing vengeance if you’re too dead to pursue it.

With his head back in the game, he didn’t miss his chance to squeeze past Youpi while it focused on his smoke clones. The opening was at the cost of losing his pipe, however—having given it to a clone as a decoy—so he was stuck watching Youpi from the second floor until he figured out how to get it back.

And then, Shoot.

Shoot was a fucking champion, coming at Youpi with everything he had in spite of his broken leg, riding around on one of his fists—a brilliant maneuver that Morel knew for a fact had been made up on the spot. The assault created another brief opening that was too small for Morel to use but large enough for Kite to skid by, that reedy son of a bitch. They gave each other a short nod as the man took off toward the throne room; now Palm was the only one who still had to get through, but Kite could probably handle himself in the meantime.

And then, Shoot.

As Knuckle managed to land APR with a ferocious roar, Shoot spared one his hands to grab Morel’s pipe and fly it over to him.

Morel had never loved the two of them as much as he did in that moment.

 

* * *

  

_“My name is Gon Freecss.”_

 

* * *

 

Kite’s En was large enough that he didn’t need to enter the throne room to know that it was empty—which meant that he had no idea where Neferpitou would be. Its aura was nowhere to be found, either, so he also had no way to track it down. This left only one course of action: for him to sweep through the palace grounds and pray that he happens to bump into it.

So Kite disembarked to run down empty hallways like a dumbass without a map, dashing in and out of empty rooms, jumping up and down the empty stairwells. While he knew the palace layout well enough to not get lost, it wasn’t enough for him to conduct the most efficient search, so he ended up retracing his steps far more often than necessary. A grueling frustration, but one he didn’t have time to indulge.

If he didn’t find Pitou in the next minute or two, he would have to assume it was already on its way toward the King. And if that were the case, the only thing left to do would be to rush over to Netero’s battleground in the hope of keeping it busy while the Chairman fought the King.

What would Ging say if he could see him now (presuming he couldn't already)? What would he think of Kite planning such a suicidal move, preparing to throw his life away? Would he be sad or just disappointed?

… No. Kite wouldn’t die. Not here. Not like this.

But just before he gave up on his search, in an insane stroke of luck, he found a room that wasn’t empty—four creatures, one of them lying on the floor. As his En settled atop the silhouettes, the chill of anticipation settling atop his heart, he could deduce their identities well enough.

Pitou.

Pouf.

A little girl.

And…

 

* * *

  

_“And I’m here to drag you back to hell.”_

 

* * *

 

Shaiapouf almost grinned.

“Oh, really?”

Because he saw the possibility. The opportunity. A new plan. A _better_ plan.

Because what had presented itself was more than he could’ve ever hoped for. How could this have come to be, to have the perfect solution thrust upon him out of the blue? For the heavens to smile on him so after such a spell of hardship? Simply put, it was an insane stroke of luck, and Pouf was nothing if not opportunistic.

“Because if you do that,” he continued, “you’ll never get to see your friend again.”

The human’s mind screeched to a halt.

Everything changed in that moment. Like a wrecking ball cut from its chain—an old tire swing collapsing on a long-abandoned ranch, stranded in a graveyard of forgotten memories—his momentum hurled him into the ground, a crash spoken by his silence and the way his pupils dilated to a wide, gaping black.

The boy had come here with the intention to die.

“Please allow me to introduce myself: my name is Shaiapouf, one of the King’s Royal Guard, and I am the only one who knows where your friend is. The blue-eyed boy who accompanied you to the nest, if you can recall.”

He had come here with the intention to die, so Pouf had attacked that resolve directly, toying with the dangerous willpower that drove him forward. Humans carried a duplexity in that their strengths were often intertwined with their weaknesses; the sharper the mind, the more irrational its moments of confusion, and the calmer its Zen, the deeper its potential for madness. Such a strong conviction, then, carried with it a profound instability. Prod in the right direction, and you’ll see it all come tumbling down.

“Without my information, your friend will stay lost forever—or maybe suffer an even worse fate, in time.”

The boy’s heart began to pound harder against his ribcage, reminiscent of a countdown, like a timer on a bomb.

_“What did you do to him?”_

“Me? Nothing,” he smoothly replied. “I just happen to be the key to his whereabouts.”

Just then, a man stepped through the balcony entrance—the very same man he’d fought on the day of his birth, some kind of harpoon strapped over his shoulder, come to join this happy reunion.

Pouf extended his hand in a diplomatic gesture to the two of them. “Ah, but perhaps we could come to an agreement: in exchange for information, you’ll hold off on fighting us until this girl is healed.”

Mistrustful of his sudden change of heart, Pitou whipped its head back and forth between them, its whole body dripping with sweat. Now all Pouf had to do was make sure it didn’t say anything to mess this up.

The boy twitched at the corner of his mouth. “… To… heal her?”

“Please!” Pitou yelped, unsure of what its plea would accomplish but desperate enough to try whatever it could; it wasn’t willing to stand idly by while the girl was discussed. “Please, we’ll… we’ll do anything!”

The man took a step forward from the back of the room. “Anything?” he cautiously asked. “When you say anything—”

“Did I say you could talk, Kite?”

The man felt like he’d just been slapped in the face.

“To _wait?”_ the boy repeated, heart rate still picking up. “You… you want me to wait?”

“Yes,” Pouf said with a pleasant nod. “Until then, my lips are sealed.”

At this point, his microscopic clones had finished crawling their way through Pitou’s nostrils to find a home in its windpipe, clogging its airway and thus silencing any further interference. And the sight of Pitou’s subsequent fit—clawing violently at its throat, trying to express itself in any way it could—only made that little heart beat harder and harder.

“No,” the boy whispered.

“No?”

His aura exploded, and Pitou began to cry as it choked on the floor.

“FIGHT ME,” he screamed through the fiery haze. “FIGHT ME SO I CAN BEAT THE ANSWER OUT OF YOU.”

Pouf shook his head sadly. “Not until the girl’s fate is decided.”

“AND WHY CAN’T YOU JUST FIGHT ME NOW?”

He touched his fingertips to the center of his chest. “I am but a clone, significantly weaker than the me you faced back at the nest. If we fought, I’m not sure I would win, and then you and your companion would be free to attack my dear Pitou while defenseless,” Pouf explained with a rueful smile, flippant in a my-hands-are-tied sort of way. “By delaying our fight until the healing is done, I guarantee the safety of my fellow Royal Guard. And it is essential to us that the girl is healed.”

It was a small gamble, to assume that they already knew of his cloning ability, but the soldier ant that they won to their side would’ve surely kept them well-informed. And Pitou’s lack of aura should’ve been enough to convince them of its current helplessness.

“AND—A-AND—AND I’M SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE YOU? THAT YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS? THAT YOU LEFT HIM ALONE ONCE YOU FOUND HIM? THAT YOU’LL DO WHAT I SAY IF I LET THAT THING FINISH?!”

“I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me.”

The emerald ring on the boy’s finger shattered from the pressure of his aura.

“Gon!” the man frantically called, somewhat aware of what was happening to his little friend but making sure to keep his distance, afraid of how the boy would react if he approached. “That dragon attack from before… is probably what injured that girl. I think they’re telling the truth about healing her.”

“WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?”

“You should wait for them, then,” he said as a bead of sweat rolled down his brow. “Our goal is to keep them away from the King, remember? And we have no way to know if this is Pouf’s main body or if it really is just a clone. So if they want to spend their time cooped up in here, and they’re not hurting anyone, then… then that’s what we want.”

Pouf watched his dark eyes narrow further with rage. “Don’t talk to me about what I want, like you know anything about that,” the boy hissed. “This bastard’s talking about Killua, and you tell me to WAIT? TO STAND AROUND LIKE EVERYTHING’S OKAY?!” he roared, reeling around to turn his wrath on his companion. “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

He didn’t know how to answer that.

“WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THAT GIRL, HUH?” the boy then demanded of Pouf. “HOW COME YOU CARE ABOUT _HER_ AFTER YOU _T-TOOK KILLUA AWAY FROM ME…?!”_

“Gon, if you attack it now, it has no reason to tell you anything!” the man interjected, trying a new approach. “Waiting is the only chance we have to learn anything about Killua!”

And now the boy was positively hateful.

“Don’t act like you care about him,” he muttered. “Like it means anything to you.”

The man swallowed his pain quite well.

“I’m the only person in the world who really loves him. Not his parents… not his brother… nobody else,” the boy anguished. “I’m all that he has. The only one. The one who’s supposed to _look after him_. And now… AND NOW…!”

Both Pouf and the man took a step back from the outburst. “Calm down, Gon…!” the human exclaimed.

“C… CALM? _C-C-CALM? YOU WANT ME TO BE_ —”

The kid started to hyperventilate, fingers twitching uncontrollably, aura coming out in uneven spurts—sinuses burning, sweat pouring down his face, tears building at the corners of his eyes—and the heart just kept speeding up, faster and faster and faster and faster…!

“You’ve got no other choice,” the man so desperately tried to explain. “You have to wait.”

“He’s right, you know,” Pouf agreed, suppressing a bark of laughter, because of course the kid had another choice, and now the man was unintentionally helping Pouf to goad him into it. _Go ahead, little boy,_ he silently encouraged. _Prove us wrong. Show us that the girl’s not special. That you’re not out of options. That your back isn’t up against the wall. Make us understand that you are not to be trifled with._

“It will only take about another day to heal her, by the way,” Pouf added.

Pitou kicked its feet even harder at his lie.

The man widened his eyes.

The boy stepped past Pitou’s flailing body, raised his foot, and stomped down on the Gungi Master’s head with a swift crunch and splatter.

Faster and faster, racing toward the flatline.

 _“MMMMMM_ _—!”_ Pitou tried to scream as it shoved him out of the way. Suffocation forgotten, it worked to scoop up the bits of brain with its own two hands, and _Dr. Blythe_ immediately swerved all its instruments to the head; a few bloody shoeprints left in his wake, the boy stumbled backwards, and the man grabbed him from behind to drag him further back.

 _Thanks for doing my dirty work,_ Pouf gleefully thought when _Dr. Blythe_ disappeared.

And then Pitou’s aura fell over them like a tidal wave, raising blisters on the humans’ weaker skin, so hot that the clones stuck in its throat instantly melted. Not that it mattered, anymore, since Pitou was no longer in the mood to talk.

Pouf estimated that the seven total intruders had about eight seconds to live. Pitou lunged for the boy first, of course—

—and the man tackled it with enough force to throw them both through a window, falling onto the courtyard below with a mist of broken glass.

… Twenty-four seconds, then.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR BEING LATE

After stepping into the room that housed Gon, a little girl, and two Royal Guards, Kite made a series of poor decisions.

The first was in letting Pouf talk in the first place. He should’ve attacked it the moment he realized Pitou wasn’t a threat.

The second was in assuming that Pouf wanted the girl alive. He had no reason to believe otherwise (given that Pitou seemed intent on healing her), and this assumption had led to a misjudgment of Pouf’s objective: to protect the surgery from any disturbance while Pitou was defenseless. Kite had thought Pouf would leap up to defend the girl when Gon approached her, so his focus had been on anticipating Pouf’s next move instead of Gon’s.

The third—and perhaps the most grievous—was in trying to manipulate Gon. Not for one second had Kite believed that Pouf knew anything about Killua; it was infinitely more probable that Pouf’s every word was a lie—an attempt to get under their skins and compromise their initiative. So even though it was sensible (and most humane) to stand by and let Pitou heal the girl, they had no good reason to not fight Pouf instead. But Kite _didn’t want_ Gon to fight Pouf if it wasn’t strictly necessary, because he _knew_ (deep down with all the other painful insights he couldn’t afford to repress) that Gon might throw everything away to get the win. So, in an attempt to belay their confrontation, he’d acted like Pouf might’ve actually known Killua’s location, like waiting was the only way they would ever find him.

Needless to say, his plan did not work.

What Gon had thought in that moment, it was impossible to tell. Maybe he believed Pouf, or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did it because he hated the girl, maybe because she interfered with his goal. Maybe he did it as a stab at Pouf, who seemed to want the girl healed. Maybe he did it to incite Pouf against him, maybe because he just wanted to fight or maybe because he just wanted to die. Maybe he thought it was his only avenue of retaliation.

In any case, Kite had underestimated the boy’s raw need to _hurt_ someone. If he’d known how bad it was, he would’ve readily stepped forward for Gon to take it out on him. He was more than willing to bear the pain.

But Kite didn’t think about any of this as he watched Gon become a murderer. He didn’t think about the things he should’ve done as he pulled him away from the corpse.

Because when he saw Pitou lunge at Gon, Kite didn’t have time to think. Time stopped. His body moved. He jumped in front of Gon and tackled Pitou through a window. 

 

* * *

 

In the shafts of light coming down from the ceiling, a cloud of dust could be seen drifting about the room, turning invisible wherever it passed into shadow. The light’s blue tinge made the cloud look like a haze of rain—a piece of springtime air that, by rights, should’ve been damp and cool. But the cloud was not wet, nor was it cool, nor was it kind to his eyes or lungs. It clung to his wounds and made them ache, but the pain was dull, at this point. Barely noticeable. Both ever-present and non-existent, much like the cloud itself.

“Knuckle!” Shoot coughed as he fell against the rubble.

No answer.

A few more staggered limps.

“Kn… Knuckle…”

His good leg finally gave out, but he didn't let it discourage him; if he had to crawl, then he had to crawl. There was no shame in that.

“Shoot…!” he heard Knuckle wheeze to his left, so he dragged himself a bit further to lie beside his fallen comrade.

Strangely optimistic, the question passed through Shoot’s addled mind, _Did you finish the job?_ The more he thought about it, though, the more he didn’t want to ask.

“That bastard looked at me like I was trash!” Knuckle bit through his tears. “Like I'm not even good enough to finish off…!”

After swatting Shoot a hundred meters away, Youpi had taken Knuckle out of commission and run off in search of the King, leaving the man to die on his own. Now they lay together in a pool of their own blood; it was a humiliation that neither of them had come prepared to face.

“Damn it,” Knuckle sobbed against the sticky tile. “I… I can’t even move…!”

In that moment, a gust of wind came swirling through the ravaged foyer, raising goosebumps on Shoot’s sweaty skin. Teeth grit in a bloody grimace, he slowly clenched his only fist.

“… No.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go kill that bastard,” he groaned as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “Come on!”

“You don’t understand,” Knuckle rasped. “I think… my spine got broke…”

Shoot was surprised at how much it hurt to learn that.

“… Is APR still active?”

“Y-yeah…?”

Letting out a ragged growl, he reached beneath Knuckle’s broken back, slung him over his shoulder, and heaved them both upright, only able to stand on his left leg. “Track Youpi with APR. I’ll carry you, and you can tell me where to go.”

Shoot didn’t know where he was getting this surge of strength, but it didn’t seem to surprise Knuckle at all.

“Alright.”

One step at a time, he struggled onward, a shaky hand reaching out to the next piece of rubble, and then the next, and then the next. His vision blurred, and he could hardly hear anything over his own desperate panting, but Knuckle’s voice still cut through the fog: “Left.”

 _“Gaah…!”_ Shoot choked as he forced his bloated ankle to turn flat on his foot; the sole of his sandal slipped precariously across the gravel under the weight of their bodies.

They made it down the hallway.

“Left.”

Shoot made another left.

“Right.”

He went right.

“… Shoot?”

“Wh… what?”

“This doesn't look good, does it?”

“Who cares… how it looks?” he gasped out. “There’s us… and there's the enemy… and as long as it goes like that… then our job’s not over.”

That was the sort of fight they had come to.

“… I’m kinda glad.”

“Huh…?”

“That I got to see you man up about this shit!” Knuckle exclaimed. “A week ago, you would've been quivering in your boots, but now you look ready to fight through hell and punch Satan in the face!”

“Heh… heheh… yeah…”

“But I’m also glad that… that it's you, who I'm with.”

“Me… too…”

“You’re a cool guy, Shoot. I'm glad to have known you.”

A hiccup gurgling at the back of his throat, Shoot found himself beaming with a watery smile, tears leaving muddy tracks down his dust-coated cheeks. They’d both come a long, long way. Seen a lot of sunsets. Pet a lot of dogs. Lived a lot of life.

“I'm… glad… too…!”

And he really, really was.

“Now let’s go!” Knuckle energetically roared. “Youpi's right over there!”

Shoot reached over to firmly clasp Knuckle’s unresponsive hand; though the man was paralyzed from the neck down, he felt Knuckle return the grip all the same—felt it in the wideness of his grin and the brightness of his eyes—their blood running together between their fingers and their palms.

“Yeah!”

Thus, Knuckle and Shoot died hand in hand.

 

* * *

 

In the midst of his running, Morel paused for a moment.

Then he suppressed a curse and dashed back through entrance archway; he had no idea where to look for Pouf if it wasn’t in the throne room—which it wasn’t. Its clones were dispersed all throughout the palace, as well, making its real body impossible to find through aura alone. This left only one course of action: for him to sweep through the palace grounds and pray that he happens to bump into it.

So Morel disembarked to run down empty hallways like a dumbass without a map, dashing in and out of empty rooms, jumping up and down the empty stairwells. In addition to being pocket-sized, Pouf’s clones were constantly shifting around, so he almost immediately lost perception of the few glimmers of Nen he chanced upon. And it certainly didn’t help that his En was quite small for a man of his aura’s stature; he spent most of his time at sea, after all, and aboard the close quarters of most seafaring vessels, there was simply no need for an En larger than a few meters.

Fuck. It had been about three minutes since the dragon attack had ended, which was probably more than enough time for the Royal Guards to get their shit together. If Morel couldn’t find Pouf in the next few seconds, then he’d have to assume it was already on its way to the King, and if that were the case, his next move should be to rush over to Netero’s battlefield and try to keep it occupied. Fuck, but _Smokey Jail_ was really the only way to keep Pouf contained, and that needed the element of surprise to work—something he’d never have if he came barreling at Pouf from across the wasteland—so he’d have to come up with a new plan on the way there.

But just before he abandoned his search, something came to him. An aura.

Gon’s aura, actually. Erupting in a violent frenzy, it was powerful enough for Morel to easily pinpoint all the way on the other side of palace. Holy shit, that kid was a maniac. Morel had given up on teaming with him after they’d been separated (he simply didn’t have time to look for both the boy and the Royal Guard), but with an aura like that… he was probably facing Pouf.

So Morel took off for Gon’s—and, presumably, Pouf’s—location. Clone or not, it was better than nothing.

And then he saw Youpi blocking the path before him, Knuckle and Shoot nowhere to be found.

And then Neferpitou’s En returned. 

 

* * *

 

In a catlike maneuver of feral grace, Neferpitou flipped midair to land on its feet and immediately went for the jugular, Kite barely dodging the arc of the swipe. The survival of Pitou’s following assault required the short-circuiting of all but the barest of reactionary thought, and for a few glorious moments of animal instinct, there was no Gon or love or fear—only this dance with death, the spirograph of coming and going.

He didn’t notice the singing of his clothes from the sheer heat of Pitou’s aura, nor did he feel the scorching of his throat for each new breath he drew; first degree burns rose unseen on his hands as he reached out to deflect a blow, still disregarded as they mottled to the second degree, and then the third; he fought through the shimmering waves of the air’s convection, through the popping of his ears, through the smoke that rose from the footprints seared by Pitou’s every step.

Kite managed to keep this state of mind for a full twenty seconds.

And as the pain started to hit him, he lost the ability to follow Pitou’s movements and was instantly overwhelmed by its speed. The oncoming blur surging for his head, he tripped himself to fall backwards; the blue-white streak flew past him overhead and slammed into the palace wall on all-fours, legs tensing in preparation to pounce back at him. This was the most distance put between them thus far, and as Pitou’s leap took it airborne once more, he had just enough time to grab #6, point it in front of him, and pull the stupid trigger.

_“ FUCKING FINALLY!”_

And Pitou dodged the shot, of course, but it hadn’t been Pitou to which he drew aim; the explosive tip of the spearhead pulverized the buttresses of the rampart behind them and buried itself in the wall. The Royal Guard paid no mind to the rope now strung taut between Kite and the building—readying itself to jump at him again—which was good, because that only furthered along the surprise when Kite dug his heels into the ground, gave a tremendous heave, and pulled the wall down on top of it.

“ACK—!”

And while Pitou was distracted by the hail of brickwork, Kite turned tail and ran like hell. There was no way he could fight that thing hand-to-hand; no, he had a much better chance of success if he engaged it at range, and even if he couldn’t keep the distance, he would at least draw it away from the others. So Kite ran, one foot ahead of the other, and—

The first thing he registered was the loss of balance.

And then he saw his right arm land five meters in front of him.

_“ WOAH, DID YOU JUST LOSE YOUR GODDAMN ARM?”_

It had been a mistake to take his eyes off Pitou. Especially since his En had been dropped in favor of keeping Ryu.

_“ YOU’RE SO FUCKING DEAD, BRO.”_

There was no time to reflect on that, however, since Pitou was already hurtling back at him like a falcon in freefall as it dove for the fish—unshakably intent on the kill. Kite tried to redirect its momentum by spinning the impact, but the brunt of it was too much to absorb, and he fell off his stance, and his arm was gone, and this was _it,_ el fin, goodbye—

Something flew in Pitou’s direction and forced it to back off.

A… serrated kitchen knife.

_Palm, you crazy, bitchy godsend._

So Palm took the scene by storm, decked out in a bandolier of knives, black hair swishing in a ponytail behind her like a clump of seaweed in full bloom. Kite watched awestruck as she went slashing at Pitou with all her usual vigor, and then he watched in mounting horror as the burns began to show—a redness that spread down her arms, her cheekbones, the tip of her nose. Jolted from his daze, he came at Pitou’s unguarded front in an attempt to overwhelm it, but the Royal Guard simply outstripped them both with a sixty-meter vertical leap.

… Wait.

“G-get—get behind me!”

Since it had a straight jump up, it would have to have a straight fall back down (assuming minimal wind shift)—which meant its trajectory was _predictable._ Summoning another shot to the chamber, Kite turned #6 toward the sky and, as soon as Palm was out of the way, fired at where Pitou had no choice but to descend.

The explosion lit the night sky as briefly and brightly as a finger of lightning, the clap as loud as thunder overhead. Along with the rain of tiny meteors thrown out of the smoke, a larger body dropped like a rock from the cloud’s center: Pitou, who… tanked that shit point-blank without a scratch to show for it, clutching the shaft of the spear in its mouth and then snapping it in two with a single chomp.

Goddammit.

“Here,” Palm said as she shoved her knife-sash to Kite’s chest and rushed for where Pitou was bound to land. He decoded her order well enough: fall back and provide support. A good idea, given his current… left-handedness.

So, with #6 strapped over his shoulder once again, Kite watched Palm’s flank while she jumped to meet Pitou midair, and it was a good thing that he did, because if not for him throwing a knife at Pitou’s wrist, Palm would’ve immediately gotten her nutjob head torn off—the Nen-enhanced blade only bouncing off its skin, of course, but hitting hard enough to knock the strike awry. And this should’ve been the point at which Kite traded #6 for something better, but half of _Crazy Slots’_ weapons required two hands to operate (which he kind of didn’t have right now), so if he got a bad role, he’d be stuck carting around a totally useless number—something he couldn’t afford to suffer. And for some reason, he could tell… that he wouldn’t get #3. His mindset wasn’t right, somehow.

But damn, Palm wasn’t faring any better than he’d been, and it was only about ten seconds later that he had to throw another knife, _but then Pitou caught it and turned the blade toward Palm—_

And he managed to push her out of range of the slice, but his remaining thumb was hacked off for the effort.

There goes his capacity to use _Crazy Slots_ at all.

 _“ OKAY, NOW YOU’RE _ SUPER _DEAD._ _”_

Palm rebounded swiftly from Kite’s shove, darting past him as he jumped backwards with the gouge in his hand (as well as the shallow cut to his wrist) held tightly to his shirt. The wound of his arm socket had been semi-cauterized by Pitou’s aura while he’d fought it, but the heat varied directly with proximity to Pitou itself, and he could no longer get close enough to the Royal Guard (with an intact expectation to survive) for his hand to receive the same treatment.

So he did his best not to bleed out, and Palm flipped and kicked about in all her Enhancer glory, but Pitou was too fast to hit and too strong to care about _being_ hit, and all it had to do was reach for the throat…!

But it didn’t.

Because it was busy looking up at the sky.

And in the sky, there were a million glistening currents of Pouf’s clones, the masses conglomerating into larger versions of themselves and flying southward at top speed. They disappeared into the distance without a glance to the battle below them, and Pitou watched their departure for a moment's passing before taking off in the same direction, bowling both Kite and Palm over from the air displacement produced by its leap.

  

* * *

 

Kite rose to his feet, took a few steps, and fell back down.

“We… we’ve got to… go after them,” he gasped, getting up once again. “Palm. We’ve got to go.”

Palm stared at him as she stood up herself, silent but for the brittle grass crunching beneath her feet, the courtyard greens having been petrified to a skeletal swath by Pitou’s aura; the pasture had died so quickly that it hadn’t even yellowed, the roots turned to channels of ash and insect life decimated before a Rapture-like apocalypse.

“Palm, listen. We’ve got to…” And Kite lost his balance again as he stumbled toward her, but she held out an arm to catch him this time, keeping him upright.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she observed.

“No, Palm, focus,” he breathlessly insisted. “We’re wasting… we’re wasting time…”

“The Chairman sent a message just before I got here,” she revealed. “He detonated the bomb before he and the King arrived at the appointed site.”

“Wha…?”

She pushed him off of her, apparently tired of him bleeding all over her purple jumpsuit. “There’s no need to go after the Royal Guards, anymore. We’ve completed the task we were hired to do.”

Kite tried to wrap his head around the idea.

“It’s… over…?”

“Yes. I can now resume my tutelage under Knov-Sensei, and you can go back to being a despicable liar under your own filthy master.”

He blinked a few times as he swayed on his heels. “Th-then—then…” he stammered. “Then we have to get over to Gon. I-I left him with Pouf, and… we’ve got to help him.”

“All of Pouf’s clones just left.”

“But Gon still… still needs help.”

“So do you. It would be prudent of me to bring you to a hospital.”

“No, Palm,” he moaned, falling forward once more, but then Palm caught him by his waist and let him lean against her shoulder. “Go find Gon.”

“… You lost your thumb to save me,” she stated. “Why?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Kite hollered. There were a multitude of reasons for why it’d been a good idea to save her—she was his comrade; she’d saved him; if she died, he was sure to immediately follow—but he hadn’t had any of that in mind when he’d done it, and Palm could somehow sense this.

_“ WOW, NO NEED TO GET—”_

“Fuck off!” he snapped, dismissing _Crazy Slots_ with a wave of his disfigured hand. “I just… save stuff, okay? I don’t like it when shit dies for no good reason.”

The concept seemed to be new to Palm, as she pondered it without comment.

“G-go find Gon,” he repeated. “I’m… gonna pass out, soon… so it has to be you.”

“You need medical attention.”

He shook his head weakly against her hair, his forehead pressed to her temple; he'd lost his hat long ago in the fight. “Later, please. Go help Gon. Only you… can do that, now. No… no one else…”

The blood kept dripping down his wrist.

“I… can’t help him…”

Clouds shifted in the skies above.

“I can’t… do anything…!”

Somewhere in the world, Gon stood with a shoe drenched in blood, wanting to kill and to be killed.

_“I… I can’t…!”_

A few new footsteps approached them from the left, and Kite whipped his head around to find who else but Knov walking toward them. “It’s o-over, now,” he said, face unnaturally gaunt, hairline all but disappeared. “I have paramedics waiting in the wing.”

Kite shook his head again, trying to explain. “No, you’ve got to… Palm, you _have_ to… Palm… Palm… _Palm…_ ”

And so Palm handed Kite off to Knov, who promptly took him inside his Nen space for him to be swarmed by doctors. The hospital lamps shining directly in his eyes—consciousness slipping away—he heard her say one last thing before the portal closed: “I’ll look after Gon.”

With that understood, Kite let his eyelids fall shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT CHAPTER MIGHT ALSO BE LATE
> 
> also, the next chapter is a doozy. Prepare thyself x 1000000


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure you read to the end

_A trace of thunder rumbling above, rain was on the sky’s mind while Knov departed for the cloudless world of his Nen space. Neferpitou’s En had disappeared for some unknown reason, which made this the perfect—and, perhaps, the only—opportunity to infiltrate the palace and place the portals for the coming invasion. The attack was scheduled to occur a mere three days from now, and everything rode on his ability to get the team inside the enemy walls. He could not afford to fail._

_This was what was on Knov’s mind as he poured over the blueprints for the palace layout. Within the palace, he’d lay three exits at varying distances from the throne room, and they could use whichever one the situation called for when the time actually came. That would give them a degree of adaptability, but was it enough…?_

_“… Er, Knov-Sensei?”_

_He turned a page of the map. “What is it, Palm?”_

_“A-are you sure it’s a good idea to have that man Kite fight Pitou with us?”_

_“Why do you ask?”_

_She shifted demurely before his gaze. “I… don’t believe him a reliable associate.”_

_Palm certainly had a problem with Kite, he understood. After the battle royale that had determined who would go to NGL, Knov had caught her plotting to kill him on more than one occasion, resentful of the injuries she’d suffered at his hand. Each time Knov intervened, her response was always the same:_ he’s a snake; he deserves it; yes, he’s our comrade; yes, I understand; okay, I’ll stop. _Usually, it only took a single reprimand to quell her bloodlust, but when it came to Kite, her hatred survived her obsessive desire to gain Knov’s approval._

_“Are you saying that he’ll run away from the invasion?”_

_“Ah, no,” she mumbled, eyes downcast. “But his priority will be selfish—to keep himself alive. He won’t endanger himself for the mission or for his allies, which means he might not execute his task appropriately.”_

_“… Palm.”_

_She startled at the word, flustered by the impression of having Knov’s full attention. “Y-yes?”_

_“When you believe the worst in people, you create a world that’ll only bring out the worst in yourself.”_

_“Oh…”_

_“Let yourself have hope in others, when it’s within reason. And I would say it’s more than reasonable to hope that Kite might surprise you.”_

_Knov could tell that all of this was flying way over her head—or, rather, bouncing off of it; she simply refused to envision Kite as anyone but the bastard she made him out to be. Well, Palm had always been a… selective thinker. It didn’t really matter so long as she did what was asked of her when the time came, which she always did._

_“We all may die, soon,” he sighed, giving up on the conversation. “Let’s try to face death without any grudges, shall we? I’d like it if we could all go out as friends.”_

 

* * *

  

This was what was on Knov’s mind as he looked upon the bodies of Knuckle and Shoot, their lifeless hands still clasped together.

 

* * *

 

—and the man tackled Pitou with enough force to throw them both through a window, falling onto the courtyard below with a mist of broken glass.

… Twenty-four seconds, then. It shouldn’t take any longer than that for Pitou to dispose of the intruders—although, that number might increase a little if some of them band together before it can finish picking them off. Maybe… a minute. A minute and a half?

Well, hopefully not that long. The sooner Pitou could join him on his journey toward the King, the better; his real body had been following Him, the old man, and the dragon this whole time, of course. Unfortunately, he had to keep a few kilometers away for fear of being spotted, knowing that the King was liable to kill him if He learned of his disobedience—which he would deserve, of course, but it would be a disservice to die while use could still be made of him. So he stalked them from afar in wait of the moment when things start to happen and he might fulfill one of the King’s needs.

Life had a way of working itself out, it seemed. There was reason to be grateful.

Shaiapouf turned away from the window frame and looked back at the unlit room. The corpse of the girl was a dark blob in the corner, the blood indistinguishable from the rest of the shadow, and the boy stood a ways away, staring at him.

Just… staring.

The ways of humans were as many as they were bizarre. Indeed, the boy’s heart had abandoned its previous meter and now beat quite slowly, almost sluggish in its occasional motion, the gaps of stillness between each beat growing wider and wider—each drawn breath lagging farther and farther behind the next. And then Pouf realized that he couldn’t exactly discern the boy’s emotions, which was an interesting phenomenon. Perhaps he was truly feeling nothing at all?

No matter. There was only one thing left to do, here.

“Ready to drag me back to hell?” Pouf mocked.

“I think we’re already there,” the boy answered.

The Royal Guard shook his head at the short-sighted opinion; hell was a world without the King’s order, and this world had a King. However, he knew there was no way to impart this truth on the human, so he simply said, “Then I imagine what awaits you now must be truly terrifying.”

So Pouf rushed at the boy, looking to kill him quickly and easily, but his target was surprisingly quick on his feet and swerved out of the way. Their subsequent bout was akin to a game of tag, with Pouf diving back and forth while the boy did whatever gymnastics were necessary to preserve his life. As a mere clone, he really had no way to overturn this stalemate through brute force alone, so he resigned himself to the arduous task of feeding other, smaller clones through the boy’s throat and choking him to death.

And while he initiated that process, he stopped their chase-around to hover near the ceiling at the center of the room; there was no need to do anything but bide his time, after all. The human could neither run nor hide nor fight back in any capacity. It was over.

“… He played dead.”

The boy waited for him to elaborate.

“Your friend, with the blue eyes,” Pouf said. “He played dead. That’s how he got away from us. I had no idea that humans could force their hearts so close to stopping, like that. Or that they could silence usually autonomous portions of their brain activity. He certainly had some tricks up his sleeve.”

The boy was quiet.

“So he played dead. And we left his body unsupervised with the rest of the meat waiting to be processed for the Queen, so nobody noticed when he woke up from his coma.”

Still quiet.

“The meat locker was also far enough underground to be out of range of Pitou’s En—very lucky, to wind up in such a covert pocket of space. The stars were aligned to save him, it seemed.”

And quiet.

“However, the En made it so there was no way to slip out of the nest undetected, so he did the next best thing and _hid._ Yes, he dug a deep hole in the ground and hunkered down in it, hoping that someone would someday rescue him.”

And quiet.

“And a person did end up getting rather close—an interesting woman who appeared as a young girl, at first, but transformed into quite the muscular specimen in battle. Pitou couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks!”

And quiet.

“Ah, but do you really think we wouldn’t eventually find him?”

And quiet.

“We dug up his hole. At that point, he was terribly dehydrated, to speak nothing of the starvation. He couldn’t fight back much.”

And quiet.

“When I say ‘we,’ I mean a group of soldier ants, of course. I myself didn’t know about it, at the time.”

And quiet.

“The soldier ants devoured him right then and there. It’s an unfortunate outcome, really; ‘rare’ humans were a favorite of the Queen. If there had been some higher authority present, his body might’ve been rightfully delivered to Her. But the lower ranks are so unruly! They just couldn’t help but take a few bites.”

… And quiet.

“Oh, well. No use fretting over what could’ve been.”

Pouf had not garnered the reaction he’d been hoping for, which was a shame. The boy just stared and kept staring. Soon, though, there should be a tattletale whistle on his breath as the clones finish plugging his gullet. Pouf was in the middle of listening for the sound when—

Suddenly—

There was a mushroom cloud over the King.

There was—

A—

How had the old man known Pouf was following? How had—a bomb—in his chest?

No time to think. All the legions of clones in the palace filtered out of their crevices and took off for the explosion, filling the skies with their numbers.

All but one, that is.

Because the clone that’d been deployed to kill the girl didn’t leave his post. He _tried_ to leave—oh, yes, he really tried. 

_But he couldn’t look away from the boy._

 

* * *

 

Neferpitou followed the wave of Pouf’s clones toward the King, with Youpi soon joining the pack. Pitou ran; Youpi flew; and Pouf swarmed, but then…

Just before he reached the edge of the explosion, Pouf’s real body turned around and rushed back toward the palace, bolting past the other Royal Guards as the masses of his clones… fell apart.

 

* * *

 

What happened next would be seen by only two creatures, a human boy and a chimera ant. The boy’s second Hatsu—the ability known as _1v1: Final Encounter_ to Kite, named _Killua_ by Gon—activated with naught but a hitch of breath as herald, binding as one their fates and futures.

 _Killua_ was a technique meant to end conflict, to nullify the mutual hostility between the user and the target. It did this through bringing about one of two outcomes: it could either heal the rift between two people or kill the weaker among them. Simply put, _Killua_ was both a death match and peace accord, both the only option and the last resort. It forced all discord to take its course and reach a conclusion from the viewpoint of at least one participant. It settled all differences for the “winner” chosen, stopping only when someone is satisfied.

In this case, however, _Killua_ was not only a conscripted state of being, but a deadly weapon as well. Being a hive mind, Shaiapouf had a thought process like the spread of branches from a tree; it stretched out in a million directions, entertaining the infinite variance of a million independent perspectives. To have all these wandering attentions zeroed in on a single subject, his counterpart in _Killua’s_ totalistic duel… it wreaked havoc on his brain’s complicated ecosystem.

So when Gon used this Hatsu on the clone he faced, the clone had only a moment of stunned confusion before his cells pulled away from each other and flew back to their progenitor. The effect spread like a disease through the rest of his hordes, all clones losing control of their function and returning home, and Pouf’s real body found itself hurtling toward its new point of focus.

And yet, despite the massive blow it dealt to his fighting capability, the loss of his clones was not the worst of the side-effects he came to suffer, because his psyche was also irreparably crippled; as a Royal Guard, the King was, in some way, shape, or form, rooted in his every thought—a concept as integral to his being as the rest of his identity—and _Killua_ cut him off from this fundamental loyalty. It was a change he could not understand, a change that _damaged_ and _disturbed_ him, a change that attacked his greatest strength: his ability to think.

So Pouf’s real body tumbled through the doorway to stand before Gon, who in turn stood before Pouf’s real body, whose brain was an unstable, pseudo-lobotomized mess.

Gon walked up to him. Pouf did not react.

Gon extended a hand and curled a finger toward himself, beckoning Pouf to crouch down to his height. Pouf blindly obeyed.

Gon cupped Pouf’s cheek with his hand. Pouf leaned into the touch.

Gon slid the hand down to rest on Pouf’s shoulder. Pouf blinked slowly.

Above all else, _Killua_ was a technique that accounts for a world without Killua. Gon could no longer know how he’d come to be here, why he was doing this, what had led him to be this way. While _Killua_ was active, the memory of Killua was locked away in a dark recess of his mind, kept safe from his contemplation. If life is hell, then why bother loving anything at all?

So Gon closed his hand around Pouf’s neck and abruptly ripped his head off.

(Some hatreds run too deep for even _Killua_ to resolve.)

 

* * *

 

“I can—I can do it. I can heal Him,” Neferpitou sobbed to Youpi while _Dr. Blythe_ picked away at the charred husk of their King. “Just you wait. Just wait…!”

As things were, neither of them had the intellect or presence of mind to realize that feeding themselves to Meruem might’ve done the trick.

The poison killed Youpi before he could exact revenge.

Neferpitou died in another two hours, cradling Meruem in its arms.

 

* * *

 

Several nights later, all was quiet at the Zoldyck household, but seeing as this was its usual state, Illumi found nothing of substance to note. The passageway to the lowest level was completely normal in its dungeon aesthetic, melting with its usual ease into the armored corridor of their most secure facility; he’d already gotten permission from his father, of course.

He had the codes to each of the five doors. They all opened with a hiss of air untouched for the last three years, stale and faintly industrial to the nose. On this level, there was only one room with any form of ventilation, and that room was lined with the stuffed animals of one highly-monitored child.

“Illumi!”

Illumi regarded his second youngest brother with a featureless stare. “Hi, Alluka.”

“Where’s Killu? I wanna play!”

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I’d like to know as well.”

Since Illumi had failed in his mission to find him, it was safe to assume that everyone else would, too, and thus they had to resort to their fail-safe. A regrettable development, but one he knew was necessary.

“Hm… Illumi, break your toe!”

It might’ve been best to leave the request-granting to a butler, but he knew that he’d derive a great amount of personal satisfaction from doing it on his own, so he allowed himself this indulgence. At such a low level of wish-stipulation, there was no way he could fail.

So he sat down, removed his footwear, and let Alluka watch him break his pinky toe with a clean snap.

“Illumi, spin around until you throw up!”

That might be hard to do, given that he’d long since lost the ability to experience nausea. However, he _was_ able to vomit on command, so he spun around for a bit before upheaving his lunch.

“Illumi, give me two pints of blood!”

Oh, a slightly dangerous one. Illumi slit his wrist with the tip of a needle and let the blood pour onto Alluka's outstretched hands, using a strand of hair to sew the wound shut when enough had splashed onto the floor.

And there it was, the Something that had invaded his family. How could Killu be so fond of this thing? Illumi just didn’t see the appeal; honestly, the mask-face was creepy by conventional standards, and its voice grated on his ears—not to say that it actually bothered him, but still. It simply wasn’t a pleasant creature.

Regardless, if what Pouf had said about Killu was true, then this next part should be interesting to watch.

“Bring Killu here.”

“‘Kay.”

First came the skeleton, white specks appearing out of thin air and spilling out like spurned milk into their properly fitted anatomies. Then came the tissues of the organs, the red cords of the muscles, the spiderweb of capillaries, the tendons and ligaments and cartilage and fat. The pale skin and paler hair. And then there was Killu, lying on the floor, naked as the day he was born.

The still body jolted to life, and the younger Zoldyck began to gasp for air, an exertion which quickly devolved into a fit of sputtering coughs. Illumi kneeled down beside him and tilted his head until their noses bumped; the long, black tresses of his hair fell like a funeral veil all around them, blocking out the rest of the world as Killu’s blue, blue eyes twitched and fluttered open.

“Welcome home, little brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *laughs maniacally*


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR BEING LATE
> 
> I'M JUST REALLY BUSY OVER THE HOLIDAYS

Eventually, Kite woke up.

There were people rushing past his room when he was lucid enough to hear the clamor, and then all noise disappeared but for the steady beeping of a heart monitor. The next thing he registered was the sterile, actinic smell of surgical cleanliness, and when he finally opened his eyes, he came to recognize his surroundings as a hospital room and the tubing on his wrist as a morphine drip. After several seconds of numb, confused appraisal, he tried to yank it out of him, but the arm he reached with seemed not to exist. Oh, there it was—in a plastic bag on the tray beside him, along with that other thumb he didn’t have. Pitou had… oh. Oh, that kinda sucked.

And then he looked up to find literally the last person he’d expect to be standing there.

“Hi, Kite,” Machi said.

Seriously. Ging himself had a better chance of showing up than she did.

“… The fuck?” Kite intelligently croaked.

“Looks like you lost some stuff,” she observed, gesturing to the objects of his dismemberment. “The Hunter Association hired me to help with that.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him that the Association could access such a disgusting level of the world’s black market, but Kite was presently drugged out of his mind, so he did nothing but struggle to process the information as she popped open the bag and retrieved the arm, dangling it over him like a macabre mobile of fingers. Then she reached out to his bandaged stump, and he flinched a full two centimeters away from her in spite of his sluggish stupor.

Of course he had to flinch.

Unamused, Machi retracted her hand. “Do you want your arm back or not?” she asked him brusquely. “I’ve already gotten paid, so I intend to do the job, but I won’t bother if you’re gonna be difficult.”

“My… oh, my arm.”

“Yeah. Trying to help you, here.”

“Why couldn’t you have done it while I was unconscious?” he slurred, jumping once more at her touch.

This time, she turned a wry look at his resistance. “Because I wanted to say hello to my favorite boy toy,” she drawled. “Hi.”

And that sufficiently shut him up as she stripped away the gauze all over his right side, the starchy cotton peeling off the lacquer of his clotted blood.

_“Nen Stitches.”_

In the wake of each dizzying flash of her needle, countless Nen threads wove from body to limb and pulled the two together, and then Kite was flexing his once-missing hand as if nothing had ever happened. “It feels… weird.”

“That would be the skin graft,” she explained. “There was another guy before me who took care of the worst of your burns.”

Sure enough, there were two narrow strips of foreign skin crawling up his forearms, a distinctly healthy mesh against the rest of the inflamed tissue. “Shouldn’t this be bandaged…?”

“Who knows?” was Machi’s rhetorical answer. “Now give me your other arm.”

So, much in the same way his right side was restored, Kite soon found himself with a full set of opposable thumbs—which he immediately used to rip the morphine drip out of his wrist. Machi watched his efforts to sit up for a disinterested moment before turning away. “Well, I’m off. Have fun being a dad.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he muttered, eyes following the afterimages that filled the room whenever he turned his head; that may not have been morphine, what he was on.

“Hm? They say the kid they brought back is yours. You did a real shit job raising him, by the way; he's stupid as all hell.”

“What?” Kite said with a dazed smile. “Gon? Gon’s not—ha! Gon’s not my kid. I mean, sometimes I _wish_ that he was… uh… that he was my son, and—well, if he asked me to be his dad, I’d sign the papers in a heartbeat—but there are other times where I’m really… hah… I’m _really_ glad that we’re not actually…” He trailed off as he more fully considered her statement, disbelief slowly catching up to him. “Wait—wait a minute; _you_ know _Gon?”_

Detached in a keenly cynical way, she seemed bored out of her mind at his rambling. “Hardly,” Machi sighed. “We had a few run-ins from when he was trying to tail me and the rest of the gang. Oh, and his little boyfriend tried to kill me.”

Kite's eyes practically popped out of his head.

_“Boyfriend?”_

What? When did this happen? Gon had a…?

And then it dawned on him—Killua, duh. Of course she meant Killua. “Well, he _is_ a Zoldyck,” he apprehensively replied.

“Tch. Whatever.”

And Kite was not sure how to feel about Gon doing something so _stupid_ as to follow the fucking Phantom Troupe. Had he always been like this, harboring a literal death wish? Or did he just like the thrill of living on the edge? Kite had thought the self-destructive impulse was exclusive to this ant fiasco, but maybe the problem went back way farther than that. Was that how he met Killua, to pick a fight with someone that could kill him eight ways before he hit the ground? How the hell had he even survived up to this point?

_… Oh, no._

“Wait!” Kite blurted out as Machi turned to leave again. “He’s alive, right? When you say that they brought him back… you mean that they brought him back alive, don’t you?”

She paused to give him an unreadable look.

“Go find out for yourself.”

And then she closed the door.

 

* * *

 

So there Kite was, still high as a kite on whatever the hell was in that IV, stumbling through a busy hospital in search of someone who would tell him what the fuck was going on. Interestingly enough, despite his obviously injured state, no one tried to stop him or even ask him any questions, and then he noticed the black circlet around his wrist: a strip of Nen-pasted paper that carried the Association insignia in prominent red ink.

Ah, that’s right; as a Hunter, he had free reign of the place. No civilian doctor could issue any order to keep him contained—or, now that he thought about it, deny him access to other people’s medical records. Sometimes, Kite felt a bit guilty about how much undue power he’d been given over the rest of the world, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t find it useful.

Well, if there was any time to abuse his authority, now would be it. Thus, Kite shakily approached an information desk and asked without preamble, “Are there any other Hunters checked in here?”

The nurse’s eyes nervously darted from his wristband to his face. “Er… I’m sorry, but Hunters are protected under Code—”

“Of course there’s a catch,” he muttered to himself. “Well, did anyone from the Association leave me any messages? The name’s… uh… my name’s Kite.”

“Oh, um… no, I don’t see anyth—”

So Kite wandered away, hand anxiously rubbing at the thin seam above his right arm. The only thing he could do, then, was to wait in his room until someone came for him. But who knew when that would happen? It could be days, weeks—

He collapsed into a chair beside the wall, unable to stay standing. The pain was starting to kick in, and the burn itched like hell at the ridges of his donor skin, and Kite suddenly needed to vomit, because it could be days, weeks—

“Kite!”

And then Knov was helping him to his feet.

“You weren’t supposed to get up, yet,” said Knov as he reached around Kite’s torso to lead him back to his room. “Your doctor recommended that you spend at least a few days in bed. He’ll be coming to debrief you in another hour or so. Oh, how’s the arm?”

Kite swallowed the bile that crept up his throat. “Attached, I guess. Seems to work fine.”

“Well, it better, with a price tag like that,” he muttered. “But that’s good to hear.”

“… Huh?” Kite breathed, sweating with the effort it suddenly took to walk. “You paid for it?”

Knov wrested the door open with his non-dominant hand. “Well, of course. No one who fought at the palace should have to pay their medical bill; heroes like you are more than entitled to an arm and a skin graft. Speaking of which, why isn’t that bandaged?”

“I dunno,” Kite panted as he staggered over to the bed, so Knov went rummaging through a cabinet and pulled out a roll of bandages alongside a folded shirt. “So did you just pay for it, or did you also contact the… specialist?”

“I funded the Association to reach out through its own channels,” Knov disclosed, sitting down beside him. “So no, I didn’t choose the woman who attended you.”

Well, that made sense; Knov didn’t seem like the type to deal in such shady business. Being a competent Hunter, he’d probably function well enough in that sort of setting, but only if the situation demanded it of him. The point was he wouldn’t ordinarily seek out those connections, and that was something that made him… likable. Or, rather, not _un_ likable.

So Kite was comfortable in his perception of Knov as the man began to dress his wound. “Thanks for doing this,” he replied in all sincerity—Knov simply nodding his acknowledgement, focused on getting the correct wrap—and Kite felt his lightheadedness begin to leave him. “… Hey, can you tell me what’s in that IV?”

“Huh? Just morphine.”

“Oh, alright then. Because it feels a little… funky,” he tried and failed to describe. “Kinda reminds me of LSD, when you shoot it, but without the visuals and the… destiny. But it’s wearing off, now.”

Knov fixed him with an incredulous look. “You’ve _injected_ LSD?”

“I was a dumb kid,” Kite mumbled. Knov simply raised an eyebrow—perhaps a little mirth in the smile he wore, touched by an unexpected air of camaraderie—and finished taping the gauze. For no particular reason, Kite felt as though they’d reached a common ground, that there was a mutual understanding between them—a _something_ that bridged the gap. Or maybe that was just the morphine talking; either way, it was a quiet moment.

“Well, the only thing you need to focus on now is recovery,” Knov stated. He handed him the shirt, and Kite gingerly pulled it over his shoulders. “Morel’s in room four-twelve, if you wanna go talk to him. Knuckle and Shoot… didn’t pull through.”

Taken aback, Kite’s breath caught in his throat. “Oh…”

And the peace was shattered when he abruptly lurched forward, eyes wide with remembrance.

“What about Gon? He… he made it, right?”

He had to have made it. There was no other option. Kite couldn’t imagine the other option.

_And Knov fucking hesitated._

“Um, yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, he’s here. But… there’s something wrong with him. It seems to be Nen-based. But it’s not life-threatening, or anything like that! I’ve got people at the Association working to come up with a solution as we speak.”

That… did not sound good.

“What’s wrong with him?” Kite asked, tense beyond belief.

“… You probably want to see him, don’t you?”

He slowly nodded. 

“Well,” Knov sighed. “He’s in room four-thirty-three. I’ll take you there.”

 

* * *

 

Indeed, it was clear that something was wrong the moment Knov helped him through the door. Gon sat upright on the bed with the blanket thrown over his legs, dressed in the hospital brand of a button-down polo with its first few buttons undone. Face relaxed and wide awake, he looked entirely unscathed but for the IV sticking out of his arm, and yet he didn’t turn his head to address them—didn’t even blink, staring straight ahead.

Staring at a jar that contained Pouf’s severed head.

“You see, he doesn’t respond to anyone or anything,” Knov explained. “Physically, he’s fine—breathing steady, heart rate normal—but part of his mind just… isn’t there. We had to hook him to an IV because he doesn’t eat or drink. I don’t think he’s even slept since he was brought here three days ago,” he said, peering at the dark circles under Gon’s eyes. “And if you remove him from Pouf’s head, he gets… violent. Palm figured out the hard way.”

“What happened to Palm?” Kite breathed.

“She was the one who found him,” Knov recounted. “After giving up on getting his attention, she tried to pull him away, but he went crazy when he lost sight of the head. Like, he never actually seemed to notice her, but he thrashed around with _a lot_ of Nen to get back to Pouf’s body. Palm was caught by surprise and ended up with four broken ribs and a fractured clavicle.”

Kite stumbled forward to lean against the railing of the bed.

“But that didn’t stop her,” he continued, a wistful quality softening his voice. “She picked herself up, dropped the head into his arms, and managed to carry him to the rendezvous point. Heh, such a stubborn girl.” He paused to clear his throat. “But anyways, there’s a strange aura connecting him to the head, which is probably why he can’t seem to stop staring at it. I’ve made arrangements for a Nen exorcist to take a look at it; they should be here in a week or so.”

Eyes alight with Gyo, Kite observed the writhing tendril of Nen that linked Gon’s living head to Pouf’s dead one.

“… It’s his technique.”

“What?”

“A Hatsu,” Kite said quietly. “It makes him focus only on his opponent, and vice versa.”

“And what makes it stop?”

“When he’s content with the outcome of the fight.”

Knov considered this silently.

“… But that would be a Specialist move,” he concluded. “And Gon’s an Enhancer.”

“I know.”

And that’s when Knov finally seemed to grasp the severity of the situation.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s… not supposed to be possible.”

“Turns out that it is.”

“Jesus. I mean, I knew there was something _off_ about him, but I never suspected anything of this magnitude.”

“He was strong about it,” Kite whispered tightly. “Strong about how he was hurting. Sometimes, he’d mention it, a little, but he… he never complained.”

Knov hesitantly put his hand on Kite’s shoulder.

“Do you… want to spend a little time with him?”

Kite gave one, short nod.

“Alright. Um, take my phone,” Knov said as he placed it in Kite’s hand. “I’ve got another one on me you can call if you need to get in touch; the number's in the contacts. And if you need help getting back to your room, just dial three on the phone in here,” he instructed, pointing at the landline riveted to the wall. “That’ll get you the service desk, and then you can call a nurse. Sorry we don’t have the normal ‘help’ button in place; the hospital wanted to save on technology, since Gon isn’t in a state where he could make use of it.”

“That’s fine,” Kite murmured.

“I’ll be here for another two hours, and then I’ll come back later with the Nen exorcist, if you don’t call me here beforehand. And… I’ll make sure the Association does everything in its power to help him, Kite.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Take care.” 

So Knov walked out and shut the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Kite pulled a chair beside the bed and slumped down in it. There, he studied Gon’s face in all its aspects—the indigo wreaths beneath his eyes, and then the arrangement of his bottom lashes, and then all the ebb and flow of color in each hazel iris. The top lashes, then, which fanned out from the rim of his unflinching eyelids—oh, he blinked. That was nice to see.

His thin eyebrows and the lack of creases on his young forehead. The disheveled, unwashed needles of hair and the way it cropped up in short bits at his nape. The spray of freckles across his high cheekbones, sixteen larger ones and twenty-one very small. The childish swoop of his small nose. The fall of his cheeks. The smooth ridges of his medial cleft and how it met his cupid’s bow. All the plates of dead skin encasing his chapped lips. The jawline curving fluidly into his chin. The slender stalk of his neck and the winglike spread of his fluted collar.

And then the room’s motion-sensors turned the lights off, throwing a shadow over all of it.

“Killua’s dead, isn’t he?”

Relying on the daylight that labored through the window curtains, Kite looked back up to Gon’s eyes.

“That’s why you did this, right? Pouf said something that convinced you he was dead. Something undeniable.… Yeah, I can tell. That’s the only reason you would go this route. You were always going to do something extreme, but… I'm pretty sure you didn't have this in mind. I can tell. I can feel it.”

“Oh, God. What can I say? I’m so sorry. I… I wanted him to be alive for you. I wanted to believe. But at the same time… I knew that I couldn’t say anything else, because then I’d lose any hold I had on you, and you’d be free to lose touch with… everything.”

“God, I’m sorry. I wish I could turn back time and make it so I never brought you and Killua into that place. It was so fucking dumb, to just charge in there by myself with two little kids, thinking that we could handle it. If I’d waited just one damn day, we would’ve had reinforcements—the Chairman himself, for Christ’s sake! G… G-God, I wish it were me. That Killua was the one with you now, and I was the corpse that’d never get found.”

But reality didn't work with what-ifs. It worked with facts, and it worked with people, and nobody can ever do anything about it. _If It Were Me_ was but the twilight of conjecture, the no-man’s-land of wishful thinking. This was one truth Kite could understand on his own.

“And then… and then I let Bisky go try to clean up after my mistake, and she paid the price of my failure. I should’ve been the one to leave and never come back, and she should’ve been the one to stay behind with you. And then I failed that part, too, because I let you fall into this state. I promised Bisky I would look after you, and I tried so hard, but I failed her. I failed you. And… and… _and you failed me.”_

His hand clenched into a powerless fist.

“How could you do this to yourself? Make yourself into a petty murderer?! God, you were better than that! You were better than _me!_ Fuck, I’ve killed more people than I can count—it keeps me up at night, sometimes—but _you_ had a clean slate. You only get one of those, in life, and you’re supposed to cherish it while you can still afford to be innocent. To cherish not having anything to regret.”

“And you ruined it without a single thought, for no good reason. And now you’re just like the rest of us. Blood on our fucking hands.”

“Though, I suppose it’s a bit presumptuous of me to assume that was your first kill. Maybe you’ve been killing people this whole time, huh? You little sociopath.”

“… Fuck, I don’t want to love a murderer. I don’t want to love the sort of person that kills little girls just because they’re angry. Why do you make me do that, Gon? How could you put me in this situation? Because I still love you so fucking much. More than words can say.”

“I… I won’t tell anyone what you did, if they don’t already know. It seems like they don’t, so… you’re probably off the hook. Not that anyone would press charges to begin with; you’re a Hunter, after all. But _I_ know the truth. And I’m so disappointed in you.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few long seconds of nothing.

“I don’t like our relationship, Gon. It hurts too much, and I’m not a masochist. And yet… I wouldn’t trade it for anything. How fucked up is that? You’ve fucked me up so bad. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you.”

Part of him thought it wasn’t fair, the part of him that had always been fumbling for meaning.

“And fuck, Gon, you had it all! Talent. Looks. Charisma. Family. And you treat it like it’s nothing, you ungrateful brat. When I was your age, I would’ve given _anything_ to have _any_ of what you have. Now I get to watch you dedicate your life to staring at a head in a jar. God, I wanna hit you! Is this what you wanted for yourself? Is this your big ‘want?’”

“You had a real future, but you just… threw it all away. And over what? _A boy.”_

And it sounded so stupid when Kite put it like that.

“Someone to kill time and fool around with. To kiss and fuckin’ rub up against when you’re feeling horny. Just… just some boy.”

But of course, the boy wasn’t just any boy, because the boy was _Killua,_ and Killua was…

And Killua was…

“And every day he didn’t walk through the door, it was hurting you, wasn’t it? Every day he didn’t jump out of the bushes, you had to… to push yourself a little harder to say, ‘Tomorrow, for sure.’ And then the next day. And the next. ‘He’ll be back. He’ll be back.’ Kept pushing yourself a little bit harder—until one day, you woke up to find that you… didn’t really like being alive, anymore.”

Kite found his head slowly tilting backwards to rest atop the back of the chair, face pointed straight above him. His breathing was heavy. His eyes felt hot. Like a man watching the water level swell toward the ceiling of a sinking ship, it was a chime of clarity, and it was pain.

“But it’s alright, now,” he spoke softly to the darkened light fixtures when his voice finally returned to him. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Gon. Everything’s gonna be just fine. And you know why?”

He swung his head down to look back at the boy.

“Because you’ve got _me._ And I’m a resourceful guy. I am going to make things right.”

“I am going to fix you.”

“And if you still want to kill yourself, then I just won’t let it happen. I’ll hold you down for as long as I have to. Because you know what? I’m _stronger_ than you. You’ll just have to sit there and take it, because you can’t do anything to stop me.”

Moved by a sudden tenderness, Kite reached out to Gon’s hand and laced their fingers together. The mesh was bizarre, with Kite’s larger, burn-littered digits crowding out those of Gon’s unblemished hand—and it hurt, to spread his fingers so wide and jam Gon’s in between them, pressing up against all the lesions of his flesh, the skin on each knuckle cracking open to let fresh blood shine through. But with a steely grimace of tempests long weathered, Kite decided that he didn’t really mind.

“Would you love me, if I fixed you?” he quietly asked, the question irrelevant but existing nonetheless. “Any kind of love; I don’t care which. If I fixed you so that you could love another person… would you love me?”

But Gon did not respond.

 

* * *

 

“Kite!” Knov called out to him as Kite strode through the door. “I was just about to fetch you for Dr. Mandel. He’s waiting in your room, right now, and—hey, where are you going?”

“I need to have a talk with Ging.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a slow chapter, I know, but I promise that things will start picking up again


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UHHH TAGS HAVE BEEN UPDATED
> 
> (Sorry for the month of hiatus. Writing is just a bitch sometimes)

The enterprising sense of self-possession was curbed, somewhat, when Kite learned that Ging was in town for the thirteenth Chairman’s election. He’d been prepared to embark on an honest-to-God quest in the name of finding the man, and for his attendance to have been publicized at the Association Headquarters, literally a few blocks away from the hospital… it was anticlimactic, in a way. A little too good to be true.

“It’s true, though,” Knov was happy to inform him. “I sent a memo to Beans while you were in the Tavern, and he confirmed it for me. So now we’ve got two reliable sources both saying the same thing.”

Kite pulled away from the laptop, rubbing wearily at his eyes while the previously three-dimensional bartender blinked back to its place on screen.

“… Isn’t that good news?”

“Yeah,” Kite sighed. “… Sorry. It’s just suspicious, is all. I didn’t actually think he’d be in any recent news; I only checked it as a part of being thorough. In all my years of chasing him, I’ve never known Ging to answer a Zodiac summon.”

“Well, the position of Chairman _is_ a pretty big deal.”

“I guess,” he conceded, stoutly resisting the urge to scratch at his bandages. “Thanks for letting me use your License, by the way. The headlines cost about four million and some change; I’ll make sure to pay you back, sometime.” Kite then paused to feel the absence of his own wallet. “Oh, and would you happen to know where my stuff is? Just whatever was on my body when I was brought in.”

And Knov did turn a bit red-faced at that. “That’s currently, um, misplaced,” he sheepishly replied. “There was a… change in personnel when I took charge of your healthcare, and your things were put in the wrong hands during the transition. They should just be in an unidentified locker, if you want someone to go look for them. But in the meantime, you won’t have any regular clothes to wear.”

Kite rose slowly from the chair.

“I can come with you,” Knov offered. “Just as insurance, in case you need any help. You still look pretty exhausted, and you’ll have to move quick, since we don’t know how long he plans to stick around. After all, Ging’s been known to disappear part-way through other important events.”

He shook his head, the unchecked mantles of hair slipping over his field of vision. “Thanks, but Ging will run if it’s anyone but me, and I can walk there just fine. In the event that I don’t contact you by tonight, you can assume that something went wrong and do whatever the hell you want.”

“Hm. Well, I won’t get in your way if you’re sure you can handle it.”

“I can,” he muttered. “I have to.”

 

* * *

 

He was sitting alone in a conference room. 

“Hey.”

The word came unbidden from his mouth after a few seconds of just standing in the doorway and staring at the man. Aside from the stubble daubed across his once clean-shaven face, Ging looked the same as always, a figure cut perfectly from Kite’s distant memory and pasted over the present day. It had been years since he’d seen him last, after all. Years spent apart, and not a single wayward moment seemed to have touched his features—which, in fact, was exactly what Kite had expected of him; Ging would always be Ging.

Kite, on the other hand, knew he himself looked very changed. The past few months were always touching him.

“Well,” Ging said. “Howdy.”

_“Ugh…”_

And then he happened to notice Beans lying on the floor behind the office door, knocked over by… Kite accidentally opening the door into his face. Mortified, he practically yelped his apology as he shot down and stuck out a hand to help him up, “Oh, shit, I’m so sorry!”

Beans only smiled meekly at him. “Don’t worry about it,” he forgave, getting up on his own and brushing himself off. “It happens more often than you’d think. I’m fine, really.”

“You sure about that, Beans?” Ging called from the back of the room.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said curtly. “I’ll, just… be going, then.” True to his word, Beans then picked up a fallen piece of paper and left the two much taller men to their devices.

A bell tolled four times across the street.

“So how’s life as a burn victim?” Ging asked.

“Painful,” Kite answered. “Do you know what’s happened to Gon?”

He’d thought Ging would appreciate his directness, here, but the man seemed acutely bothered by Kite bringing up the elephant in the room—what was the elephant from his perspective, anyways. Kite supposed he was sporting what Ging had once dubbed his _overly serious_ expression, which meant that he was about to say something annoying, apparently.

“Yeah, I’ve heard the gist of it,” he sighed.

Kite pulled the chair beside him out from the table and sat backwards in it, his arms lying across the top of the backrest. “I wanna hear your ideas for how to fix him—any alternatives to Nen exorcism in case it falls through.”

“I don’t have any ideas.”

Resistance was to be expected. “Then brainstorm for a minute.”

“I’m rather busy right now, I’ll have you know.”

“That’s too bad, ‘cause I’ve got nothing else to do today but follow you around. So don’t try me, because I totally will.”

“… What happened to you, Kite?” Ging asked after giving him a critical once-over. “You used to be a lot more cool-headed than this.”

He shrugged, as mindful of his own nature as he'd ever been. “Taking care of Gon has been a very novel experience,” Kite replied and then furrowed his brow as he thought a bit harder. “… Wait; you mean you didn't plan for me to… feel this way?”

“You think I _planned_ for you to get attached to my son?” Ging incredulously laughed.

Well, no, not exactly. But he hadn't been able to completely discount the possibility, either. Whenever Kite stepped back to review his life, he was never one hundred percent sure that his will was entirely his own, because if there was one thing he knew would always be certain, it was that Ging Had A Plan. His belief in his mentor’s unseen machinations was somewhat akin to a religious faith, where Kite—in the rare instance of feeling both hopeless and fanciful—might entertain the thought of him having some larger destiny. Or perhaps it was closer to a superstition, that Ging was always watching and on the verge of taking action; _make sure you eat your greens, Timmy, or Ging might come and snatch you up._

“No, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he continued. “The only reason I linked you to one of Greed Island’s endings was… why the hell not?”

“Typical,” Kite muttered. Of course Ging hadn’t been _offering_ him his only son; this was all born of a flippant whim.

“And besides, I thought you said you were done with love altogether after your last girlfriend dumped you.”

(Kite did not like to think about Machi. In fact, he tried to think as little as humanly possible of the two months he spent in Meteor City when Ging had brought him there long ago. After their stay was up, he swore to himself he was never going back. He also stopped soliciting random strangers for one-night-stands.)

“Gon is different. He… he’s nothing like _her,_ ” Kite asserted. “You’d be proud of him, if you acted like his father. Well, not at the moment, though; he recently did something… really terrible. But even so, he’s still a good boy, Ging. He’s such a good boy…!”

And now Kite felt like some desperate parent trying to defend their kid.

“Alright, alright, I believe you,” Ging said, pointedly pacifistic. “No one’s saying he deserved any of this shit.”

“So will you at least come check out Gon’s Nen for yourself?”

The man breathed a long-suffering sigh. “Look, Kite,” he answered flatly. “Gon has lots and lots of good friends—friends who you can count on to come up with something. So let them use their resources, okay?”

“Uh-huh. And I’m using my resources, here.”

“… Eh?”

“That’s right—I'm calling you into play. _You’re_ my trump card,” Kite said, leaning forward against the back of the chair. “I’m not asking you to help Gon; I’m asking you to help _me._ Your student. Your friend.”

“Hey, I’m nobody’s card,” Ging scoffed. “Gon will be fine, so I’m not concerned.”

Kite turned around in the chair and scooched it so he could throw an arm over the other man’s shoulder. “But you know so much about the world! Won’t you think about it for just a little while?” he asked sweetly. “Let me suck you off, alright? You seem a little wound up.”

Historically, Ging was more likely to grant a request after sex; Kite knew very well.

“Now, what did I tell you about prostitution?” Ging questioned, a shade of amusement coloring his tone.

He nuzzled the crook of Ging’s neck. “Something about needing a good reason to do it,” Kite murmured. “But I’ve always got a good reason when it comes to you, Ging.” He started stroking slowly up and down his thigh. “Come on; it’s just me, here. And do many of your other students make you offers like this?”

“Some of them,” Ging admitted. “I have a healthy sex life, unlike you.”

Touché. “But still, I… I want you,” Kite insisted. “Please.”

“Don’t try to act sexy, Kite, because you’re really not.”

… Well, then. Leave it to Ging to completely kill the mood.

“I meant it when I said he’ll be fine without me interfering,” Ging restated. “Meanwhile, you still don’t truly know what you want, do you? What you want to do with your life, I mean. And the more time you waste fixating on my son, the less time you have to become an actual Hunter.”

Some people wander for no reason; some pursuits are always aimless. Sure, Kite wanted to help Gon, but that could hardly be called a vocation; after all this time, there was still no greater purpose to which he wished his life be ceded. Ging might’ve believed he could change, but how does one turn from a journey with no destination? How do you learn to want to land if you’ve never had a perch to come home to? Because when you move solely for the sake of moving—to keep going, keep breathing, no matter what—you’ll find yourself with very little reason to stop at all.

Kite had long since made peace with himself in this regard.

“What would you have me do, then?” he lowly inquired. “What’s the right step forward? To just… ignore how I feel about him?”

“I think you should reevaluate the situation,” Ging replied. “Because I doubt Gon needs you nearly as much as you think he does.”

 

* * *

 

“So Ging’s a dead end, huh?” Knov summed up.

Kite lay in the hospital bed, head spinning, body aching. The trip had taken its toll on his stamina, and he hadn’t been able to leave the Association Headquarters, but then Knov came to his aid (far earlier than their agreed-upon time, before Kite had even begun to consider calling for help) and took him back via portal.

“It would’ve been nice to have Ging on our side, but you shouldn’t let this worry you,” Knov told him. “We’re still far from out of options. Hell, the Nen exorcist hasn’t even gotten here yet.”

Kite had no response.

“… You really believed in him, didn’t you?”

A few more moments of silence.

“Ging’s an incredible man,” Kite eventually said. “The world’s best Hunter, without a doubt. Of course I believed in him—and I still think he could come up with some bullshit if he bothered to give it two seconds of thought. But even if it was just bullshit, I really thought…”

“That he’d want to help you,” Knov finished.

“To at least come see Gon’s condition with his own eyes,” Kite continued to explain. “Not because he thought his help was necessary—and he doesn’t, by the way—but because he knew that doing so would satisfy me, even if it didn’t accomplish a damn thing.”

And Kite was all too familiar with this state of general need, having been dependent on Ging for so many years. The reason he hadn’t cut his hair for the last decade was to keep himself desirable after the man once said that he liked it long; Kite sometimes marveled at how much of his identity was crafted around wheedling stuff out of Ging.

“I guess I thought I knew how to reach him,” Kite ruefully admitted. “As if Ging would ever do something he thinks is pointless just to be nice to someone else; he doesn’t believe Gon needs his help, and that’s that.”

_Or my help, either._

“And he’s right,” Knov said with a decisive edge. “It’s nice to have contingencies, don’t get me wrong, but Nen exorcism is the most likely thing to do the trick. There’s no need for us to do anything but sit tight until proven otherwise.”

“But, Knov… what if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll find another exorcist,” he answered. “And if that’s another bust, then we’ll research another avenue. Mark my words: I’ll shove this issue up HR’s ass till the end of time if I have to.” His expression gained a softness Kite recognized from when he’d been talking about Palm. “Rely on me, Kite. Let me solve some of your problems. I won’t let you down.”

And Kite was just beaten-down enough to say, “Okay.”

“Good,” Knov cheerily replied. “Now, on another note, do you know that the Chairman named you in his will?”

No, Kite had not been made aware. “He did?”

“Yeah, he actually left every Hunter a little something,” Knov divulged. “All I got was a note that said, ‘Be careful.’ But I heard you inherited a pretty sizable package! It’s in the hospital mailroom, right now; want me to fetch it for you?”

 

* * *

 

And what Kite looked upon was a box set of books titled, _Fifty Shades of Pink: Love without Law._ The cover of the first one had what seemed to be a porn star (judging by his state of undress) posing in the front seat of a police cruiser, and then he noticed the phrase printed toward the top of the jacket: _A novel by Dr. Biscuit Krueger, Ph.D._ Interest and disbelief equally piqued, Kite flipped it open to the first page.

> About the Author:
> 
> Biscuit “motherfucking Bisky” Krueger grew up in the southern Begerossé Union before becoming a Hunter at the young age of seventeen. Eight years later, she graduated from Yorknew University with a bachelor’s degree in Movement Science and Physical Therapy, both of which she later pursued at the doctorate level. After gaining a Hunter Star for her work in discovering the Sandloch Chain, she went on to open a practice in Yorknew City along with a Shingen-ryū dojo, the exploits of her student Natsuo Mica eventually netting her another Star. Now at the age of fifty-three, she still lives in a cozy Yorknew flat.

Everyone on the east wing’s fourth floor paused in confusion at the sound of someone shouting, _“Fifty-three?!”_

 

* * *

 

> Mimi felt along the cell wall in search of a light, but her small hand found the hard bicep of the sheriff instead. “Seems like the power’s been cut,” he gruffly said. “I knew those bastards were gonna try it eventually.”
> 
> “But what about the blizzard?” she whispered in the dark.
> 
> “I guess we’ll have to share 

“Get a load of this, Gon—‘I guess we’ll have to share body heat if we want to survive,’” he quoted to the unhearing boy. “Didn’t I call this, like, two chapters ago? Next, they’re gonna find out that there’s only one bed or something, for Christ’s sake.”

It was an exceptionally trashy romance series, the sex scenes so theatrically explicit he could hardly stand to look at the page, much less verbally relate them to Gon.

Kite still read every word.

 

* * *

 

“Come in,” he said to the knock on the door.

“Hey,” Knov whispered, respectful of it being one in the morning. “You should come over to Morel’s room; we’re drinking to Knuckle and Shoot, tonight.”

It went without saying that they’d take the liberty of ignoring the hospital’s rules on alcohol, because what exactly could a nurse do to stop them if they got caught? As Hunters, most regulations in the public sector didn’t apply to them, and those in the private were usually bought out with the average Hunter’s financial abilities. So Kite simply said, “Alright.”

Left arm slung in a cast, Morel sat at a small folding table with a bottle of whiskey and three small cups. The face exposed below his sunglasses shone with tears and snot; Kite said nothing as he sat down across of him.

“They were damn good men,” Morel began, his voice surprisingly steady and strong. “The only students I’ve ever taken and the only ones I’d ever want to take.”

A thin crack ran up the side of the cup clenched tightly in his hand.

“When I saw that Youpi had gotten away from them, I knew they’d been done in. ‘Cause as long as they drew breath, there was no way they wouldn’t be on that thing’s ass and giving it hell,” he declared. “‘Cause they were fucking fighters, through and through. No matter the obstacle, they stuck to their guns and got the job done.”

“Hear, hear,” Knov attested. “Despite everything else that went wrong, they kept their part of the deal and stopped Youpi from getting to the King on time. We have them to thank that the mission was successful.”

Kite nodded along. “I didn't know them for very long,” he said. “But I could tell that they were nice guys, once we got to talk a little. And they also got along well with Gon, which I know wasn’t always the… easiest thing to do. Shoot even expressed some concern for him every once in a while, which I… uh… really appreciated, at the time.”

“My only regret is that I couldn’t finish off that ant bastard,” Morel muttered. “God knows I tried. But I guess it’s good that you lifted me from the battle before I bled out, Knov.”

Knov smiled and took another drink.

“But I didn’t call you two here just to reminisce,” Morel then announced. “I wanted to let you guys know that after I’m done recovering here, I’m going to hunt down and kill Illumi.”

Kite choked a little in surprise.

“That coward betrayed our cause and ran when we needed him most,” he continued. “I refuse to let stand such an _insult_ to Knuckle and Shoot’s sacrifice. Not only that, but if he’d fought Pouf as intended, Gon might not have ended up in his current condition; I have to avenge that possibility as well—for him and for you, Kite.”

He actually felt a little touched.

“Er, small problem with that—the fourth Bylaw, remember?” Knov pointed out. “We’re not allowed to hunt other Hunters unless they’ve inflicted ‘atrocities,’ and I don’t even want to think of the hoops we’d have to jump through to get a formal condemnation.”

Kite realized something about Knov in that moment: he almost always said _we_ instead of _you_ when discussing the future. In a single word, he implicitly committed himself to helping other people face their challenges.

“Then I’ll keep this off the record,” Morel decided. “I’ve got no problem with vigilante justice.”

And by virtue of them inviting him to this exchange, it was clear that they… trusted Kite.

“What about you, Kite? Do you want in?” Knov asked.

He wasn’t sure what to do. Because as much as the idea of a dead Illumi filled him with warm fuzzies (in spite of his general rule of pacifism), the task would no doubt be dangerous, and if he went down, then what would become of Gon?

 _Nothing at all,_ something inside him whispered.

… If they all went down, then. That’s the case wherein something might happen.

 

* * *

 

When Kite awoke the next day, the first thing that occurred to him was that his hangover wasn’t as bad as he’d expected it to be, the migraine fairly tolerable. And then it dawned on him that there was someone sitting next to him in the bed.

“Gon…?”

And then he remembered: after they’d finished drinking, he had stumbled into Gon’s room by mistake and decided to crash there instead of trying to make it back to his own. But hadn’t he collapsed into a chair instead of the bed…?

 _Come on, baby,_ he’d gently coaxed. _Lie down with me like you used to, just for a little while. Remember how you used to do that way back when you still liked me? Oh, come on, Gon—you’ve gotta sleep. That head ain’t going anywhere. It’ll be here for you in the morning. Just sleep. You need to sleep._

… He must’ve been pretty drunk.

“Hello,” came an unfamiliar voice; he jerked his head around to find a woman standing in the doorway.

“Who—”

“The Nen exorcist,” she revealed.

“O-oh… _oh,_ ” he stammered. “Sorry! I was just… uh…”

“Asleep. I could tell.”

He jumped out of bed. “Yeah. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Well, I’m here a day early, so that’s understandable,” she said. “I suppose I should’ve sent a message to warn you. But if you’d step aside for a moment, I’d like to do my job.”

So Kite eagerly stepped aside and watched with bated breath as the woman approached the boy. She wore a gold-trimmed purple robe alongside a sash, headband, and bronze medallion; he recognized it as the traditional chieftain garb of the native Japponites.

Her gaze slowly shifting from Gon to Pouf, she turned around and shook her head.

“The hatred that sustains this bond is too much for my power to remove.”

He felt the room get a little smaller, tighter, colder.

“But I—I didn’t think that exorcism worked like that,” he hastily objected. “Doesn’t the burden come from the curse itself, not the thing that caused it?”

“It does when the Nen and hatred are so intertwined,” she countered. “… Listen. In the village where I come from, Nen is called ‘the blood of the soul.’ It is God’s gift to all living creatures and His acknowledgement of our thoughts, our feelings; with Nen, the concepts of ‘purpose’ and ‘sacrifice’ gain physical presence and power. Personal values, emotional charge, good or evil intentions—all things that only exist in the mind, all made tangible, _traceable,_ in our use of Nen. And it is in this way that we might truly manifest our will.”

She looked back at Gon, a bit of pity in her eyes.

“He put all of his mind into forging that bond, and the condition set for its release is that he stops actively hating the head, over there,” the Nen exorcist explained. “It was triggered with the expectation that he’d never come back out of it, and _that_ is a powerful will, indeed.”

 

* * *

 

Kite walked back to his room, the way forward crystal clear. He would leave the hospital and scour the globe for a way to save Gon from his animosity, to make him want to stop fighting—maybe a high dose of some kind of opiate? If morphine didn’t do the trick, they could go for something a little stronger; he had the number to his old heroin dealer saved on his phone, but calling him would require Kite having his phone to begin with, which he didn’t, because all of his shit was gone—

“ **Why don’t you ever look at your phone?** ”

Palm was in his room.

… Palm was in his room?

“… I lost it,” he tentatively replied. “Why do you ask?”

“ **Why do I ask?** ” she repeated. “ **WHY DO I ASK?** ”

He took a few steps back. “Y-yeah?”

“ **OVER THE PAST FOUR DAYS, I HAVE SENT YOU TWO HUNDRED TWELVE CALLS AND FOUR HUNDRED SIXTY-TWO TEXTS.** ”

“And you did that because…?”

She closed the distance between them, grabbed him by his collar, and yanked his face down to hers. “ **BECAUSE KILLUA’S ALIVE!** ”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figures that the most bullshit, deus ex machina chapter would take this long
> 
> Just roll with the punches through the chapter, and I'll explain everything at the end

“… What?”

“While I was looking for Gon, I saw Illumi flee the palace,” Palm hissed. “I thought it was odd, so I mentioned it to Knov-Sensei, and he instructed me to cover my eye for the time being.” And she did indeed wear an eyepatch over her right eye, for some reason. “And then Sensei told me to follow Illumi with my power—just to watch for any contact with anti-Hunter organizations, in case he’d been paid off—and eventually, he called upon some strange, childlike _thing_ to recreate Killua from nothing at all!”

Kite blinked a few times; Palm didn’t back off from his face, white-knuckled fingers still alarmingly near to his throat.

“So, your Hatsu… shows you other people?”

“It shows me many things,” she cagily replied. “Killua’s alive; that’s all you need to know.”

“… Uh-huh.”

And now Palm looked ready to burst into tears. “A… and Knov-Sensei won’t answer any of my calls, either!” she cried out; Kite froze at the weight of the borrowed phone in his pocket. “What did I do wrong? In what way did I fail him?—no! You don’t have to say it—the burns, it’s the **burns** all over me, so hideous—the skin of some awful **freak** —and now he can’t stand to think of me! And while he wanders away… d-don’t tell me… **is there another woman? Some harlot preying on his good nature, slithering into the open space…?! Tell me** — **TELL ME** — **T E L L  M EEEEE** —”

“T-take it easy, Palm…!” he exclaimed, his hands now viced around hers for fear of them seeking out his throat. “I’m sure Knov’s just been busy!”

“ **LIAR,** ” she wailed as she threw herself away from him; the extravagant motion left the girl clutching at her injured ribs. “ **YOU’RE ALWAYS SUCH A LIAR.** ”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Palm,” he began but predictably fell silent. Was there even a right way to deal with this wreck? True, he’d once seen Gon safely defuse her, but Kite possessed nothing a match for that overwhelming transparency—the friendliness, the buoyancy—that’d been key to the boy’s success. Even in a world where she didn’t hate his guts, Kite had zero chance of charming her.

And yet, the more he thought about it, the more his mind was strangely full of words to be said about Knov. “Don’t you have any faith in your master?” Kite pleaded. “He’s stuck by your side this far, right? Ever since he saved you from that asylum, hasn’t he always been there for you?”

“ **Kn** … Knov-Sensei…”

He took it as a good sign that she was quieting down. “Knov wouldn’t abandon you even if you deserved it, much less for such a stupid reason as a few ugly burns. He cares about you, Palm.”

She must really be crazy if she couldn’t see it.

“Then… has this all been a test of faith?” she hiccupped.

“No idea,” he lied as candidly as he could. “But doesn’t he at least deserve to speak his part before you jump to any conclusions?”

Palm stared down at her feet, and it took Kite a few seconds to realize that… holy shit, the meltdown was actually averted. Quickly, he stole a glance at Knov’s phone: _501 Missed Calls, 999+ Unread Messages._ It must’ve been on silent this entire time.

“Now, you were saying… you were saying that you saw Killua… alive,” Kite stated.

Palm nodded stiffly, and dear God, she was serious.

“And you’re sure that your Hatsu can’t be… I don’t know… deceived?”

She paused.

“… Ah, well…”

Every moment drenched in silence was a moment of suffocation.

“What _Mermaid Clairvoyance_ showed me was Illumi’s perception of his surroundings,” she mumbled. “If he were somehow tricked into seeing Killua, then the _Mermaid_ would also be tricked. But do you really think it could all be just a hoax or hallucination?”

Oh, dear God, that was unlikely.

“I…”

But was it more unlikely than someone actually coming back to life?

“I need to sit down,” he whispered. Nen could do all sorts of crazy things; Kite himself even had a technique that, upon death, would (supposedly) transfer his mind to a new host. So this wasn’t impossible. _It wasn’t impossible._

“I believe it really happened. Illumi acted like he knew what he was doing, so the power to rebirth people probably exists,” Palm said.

_Oh, dear God, Gon, you did it for nothing._

“… Why?” he weakly inquired, a dry and short and tortured breath. “Why are you telling me all this?” 

Palm did her best to square her shoulders at him in spite of her broken bones. “Because I… I might’ve been wrong about you, Kite,” she declared. “You’re a liar, but not a despicable one.”

 

* * *

 

For a while, Kite paced the confines of his quarters like the restless animal that he was. He needed to talk, but he needed to think, but he needed to move, but he needed to breathe. Despite evidently having some form of clairvoyance, Palm had departed to search for Knov, so he was alone with the knowledge, the thought:

Killua was alive.

But if he was alive, why wasn’t he _here?_ There was little question as to the team’s whereabouts for anyone who bothered to look; every major news outlet surely would’ve covered the Hunters’ success to some degree (with the spin that they’d also allowed millions to perish, no doubt), so in the invasion’s aftermath—assuming the worst-case scenario of their location dodging both leaks and official release, of which he found hard to believe—it still followed that a hospital would be chief among their possible visitations. And what non-local hospital was a more obvious choice than the one famously affiliated with the Association? Four days were more than enough time to (illegally) search the two or three facilities around East Gorteau and then head over here.

So what could possibly be keeping him from trying to find Gon? 

—And all Kite could think of was Illumi.

 

* * *

 

_“Hello?”_

“Hey, Knov. Uh, a lot of stuff happened this morning, and… when are you free, today?”

_“Er… I can be over in about an hour, and then I should be clear to stick around till the afternoon, if need be. Sound good?”_

“Sh… sure.”

_“Alright. Bye, then.”_

“Bye.”

It was the first real indication Knov had ever given that he was actually a busy guy, given that the man was always finding the time to check up on him. Knowing that he was soon to arrive, Kite found he could breathe a bit easier—not enough for him to actually relax, but there wasn’t much that could presently manage that, anyways.

And so he wandered into the hallway, the crowd drawn by Palm’s screaming having long since dispersed; the remaining traffic either gave him weird looks or pointedly tried not to look at him at all. It was more than a little uncomfortable, all the attention. His feet led him to Gon’s door, and he found himself turning the handle—

“KURAPIKA, PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE.”

… Did that guy just eat his phone?

“Ahem,” Kite cleared his throat to announce himself. Yanking his hand (and cell?) from his mouth, the strange man sent him an unreasonably suspicious glare as he pocketed it, like Kite was the intruder instead of him. “Excuse me, but do you have any business in here?”

“Ehhh? I could ask you the same thing,” the man hawkishly proposed. “I’m one of Gon’s closest friends, bub. I’ve got all the right in the world to be here.”

“… What?”

“I’m. His. Friend. Jesus, are you slow, or something?”

“Friend,” Kite tasted the word and then buried his face in his hand. “… Oh. Right, right. Sorry. Okay.”

“So how about you, huh? Who’re _you_ to come in here and question me?”

Time to rebound. “I’m…”

But uncertainty took hold. Could they still be called friends, after everything? Teammates, after the mission was over? Family, without Ging’s or anyone else’s approval? Too many questions, too little time. “I’m Kite,” he lamely finished.

Really, that’s all he was.

“Oh, so _you’re_ Kite?” the man exclaimed, because apparently that meant something. “I heard a little bit about you from that Knov guy—said you’ve been taking care of Gon while Killua’s gone. Is that how you’d describe it?”

“Yeah,” he affirmed, grateful for the bone he’d been thrown.

And the man, completely forgetting his former rudeness, grinned and stuck out a somewhat saliva-wet hand; Kite still affably shook it with his own. “Well, nice to meet ya! I’m Mr. Leorio, but, uh… you can just call me Leorio.” After letting Kite return the greeting, his eyes turned distant for a solemn beat.

“So it’s true, then. That he’s stuck like this.”

Since the story went unrequested, Kite was spared from having to explain. To versify and chronicle the fall of Gon Freecss.

“And even though he’s right next-door, I take it his dad hasn’t visited yet,” Leorio then guessed. Upon Kite’s lack of comment, the man’s scowl returned. “Well, then the bastard’s gonna have to answer to me,” he muttered darkly. “The rest of us should be arriving soon.”

“‘Us?’”

“Yeah, us. Gon’s buddies. I think the number I heard was eight…? Well, it’ll be more people, anyways.”

What a strange feeling it was, to become one of many after the spiritual lifetime spent as Gon’s sole defender. And in his mind’s eye, he could see it, now—the murmuring crowd of well-wishers flocking to Gon’s side, all tokens from past adventures. Would there be children, like him, or just a collection of men like Leorio? Surrogate mothers to fuss with his hair, or maybe a string of rival lovers?

Oh, now there was a thought. Shy little girls twirling their pigtails. Shy little boys tugging at their collars. Or maybe… fully-grown, mentally-imbalanced men in need of a restraining order.

A splendid lot of fools, all the same. As if they could ever compete with Killua.

“The more, the merrier,” Kite eventually said. 

Perhaps the sum of their loves could do more for the boy than his own had managed. At the very least, they could do no worse.

 

* * *

 

“Palm said _what?”_

“… Honestly, you’d be better off having her describe it herself.”

The failure of the Nen exorcist had been easy to explain. The Killua part… not so much.

And then Knov seemed to extrapolate the related events all at once. “Shit, my… my phone,” he stammered, and Kite was already holding it up for him to see his nuked inbox for himself. “I forgot she didn’t know my other… ahhhh…!”

Maybe Kite shouldn’t have been so scrupulous about respecting the other man’s privacy; if he’d checked the screen even once, this could’ve been avoided. But really, there’d just never been a reason to use it before today, since whenever Knov wanted to talk, he’d just take a portal to the hospital and do it in person.

“Would you happen to know if she’s killed anyone yet?” Knov tiredly groaned.

“No idea. But she didn’t try her hand at me, so that’s probably a good sign.”

The man squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Christ, okay. Let’s call her, shall we?” He took the phone, dialed _one,_ and held it a full ten centimeters away from his ear.

And the _KNOV-SENSEI!_ emitted on the first ring was so loud that the audio cut out halfway through, so the latter half of what he heard was from her actual voice somewhere on the floor below them; Knov doubled the distance between the phone and his ear.

“Listen, Palm,” he spoke slowly and deliberately over the din of her babbling. “I’m with Kite, right now. Come over so we can talk in person, okay? See you soon.”

To keep her from breaking down the unlocked door, Kite preemptively went to open it—almost not preemptive enough, as down the hall, two hands could be seen prying open the elevator before it even came to a stop. And thus Palm hurtled past him and skidded onto her knees before her master.

“SENSEI—”

“First of all, Palm, you’re injured. Get up off the floor and calm down; you can’t be pushing your body like this.”

Shakily, she rose to her feet and started taking deep breaths through her nose.

“Okay,” Knov sighed. “I didn’t mean to miss your calls, and no, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve been lending my phone to a _friend,_ ” he emphasized, “and haven’t seen its messages in a while. No, the _friend_ is not of the female sex. I’m sorry for worrying you so much.”

And apparently, that was all it took to reduce Palm to a blushing schoolgirl. Kite stood in awe of Knov’s power.

“… Oh, er, i-it’s alright…”

“Did you attack anyone?”

“No…”

“Good girl. Now you can tell me what’s been troubling you.”

The air was thick with anticipation.

“Ah, of course,” she nervously agreed, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Illumi, h-he didn't meet with any organizations, but something else happened! There was a small child locked deep within the Zoldyck estate—except it wasn’t actually a child, because its face changed, somehow, after Illumi completed a strange ritual. And then Killua was created from bones and tissues that came out of nowhere!”

 _Say that it’s believable,_ Kite silently begged. _Say that you believe it, too._

“… Well,” Knov finally said. “I’d say that’s worth a follow-up question, yeah?”

“Y-yes, sir!”

And so Palm summoned a… shriveled, cadaveric mermaid clutching a crystal ball above its back. Fittingly creepy, whatever it was.

“Ask for how the creature’s power works,” Knov proceeded to command. Palm nodded once before carrying the mermaid out of the room; Kite watched the passersby hastily veer away from her and her summon as she shuffled into a public bathroom.

And as they found themselves alone once more, Knov smiled mildly at Kite’s incomprehension. “This part can’t be done with an audience.”

 _Does that mean you believe it?_ “And this is…?”

“Her Hatsu,” Knov said. “The power to divine an answer to any question she asks. However, it never tells her the ‘truth,’” he then qualified. “Rather, it accesses the knowledge of someone else—her choice of the last three people she’s seen with her right eye—and answers her based on what that person believes to be true. So right now, on account of her right eye being covered since the invasion, she’s probing Illumi’s brain for info on how the creature works.”

“… That’s a little crazy,” Kite remarked.

“Indeed. It’s only made possible by a huge aura commitment, especially for someone of her relatively small reserves. That’s why she’s not supposed to use her power without my permission.”

Kite imagined her situation, endlessly agonizing over what she discovered and what to do next, unable to contact anyone she trusted enough to consult. Palm's volatility considered, it was extraordinary that she’d held up as well as she did.

Or maybe, just maybe… could it be that Kite’s words on not fucking killing people had actually affected her?

He shook his head, pushing the thought aside. “So when Palm was ‘watching’ Illumi, she’d… asked her Hatsu where he was?”

“Mmhmm. And, along with Illumi’s general location, she was made continuously aware of his perceived surroundings for as long as she kept the question going. When it comes to reconnaissance, little cheats like that make Palm more effective than any satellite.”

“… So you’re pretty proud of her, eh?”

“Hah,” Knov laughed. “Maybe a little.”

 

* * *

 

The door slowly creaked open for the girl (sans mermaid) to slink back into the room.

“I’ve, ah, completed the assignment, Sensei…”

“Excellent,” Knov warmly praised and gave her a long pat on the head, ruffling the lanky twists of her hair; she practically vibrated beneath his hand. “Now you can tell us what you learned.”

“Y-y-y-yuh-ye-yes!” Palm squeaked. “The creature is something that can grant wishes!”

Kite tensed up.

“Oh?”

“Y-yes! Someone can make one wish after they fulfill three of its requests! Requests are issued singly with an average delay of three-point-two seconds post-completion! Their difficulty varies directly with the difficulty of the previous wish granted!”

“What happens if someone fails to carry out the requests?”

“Failure will be met with another request! Upon the fourth failure, they’ll instantly die alongside the person they love most! Then, varying directly with the previous wish’s difficulty, other people will die in the order of most time spent with the request-receiver! Request difficulty will then be reset to the lowest level!”

“What leads to failure? Is there a time limit?”

“The failure criteria are known to fluctuate with the creature’s mood! To die before completing the three requests will also fail the request-receiver to the maximum number!”

“And how does one become the ‘request-receiver?’”

“The creature must know their name! The creature must be able to speak to them, and they must be able to hear the creature! There must be no other current request-receiver! They must not be the person who made the previous wish!”

“And what exactly are the things that can be wished for?”

The most important question. 

_“Absolutely anything!”_

 

* * *

 

From then on, the questions were fairly predictable— _What is the creature? Where is Alluka Zoldyck being kept?_ —and then Palm was forced into Zetsu from Nen exhaustion. A few days later, they continued— _What is the state of Killua Zoldyck? Where is he? Is he there of his own volition?_ And a few days more— _What is Illumi Zoldyck’s itinerary for the next six months? Given the remaining loyal Hunters from the C. Ant Extermination Team, what’s the safest way to kill him? How likely is it to succeed?_

_What’s the safest way for them to kidnap Killua and Alluka Zoldyck?_

Kite exhaled as he finished deleting the last of Palm’s death threats from his phone. After much delay, his handful of worldly possessions had been recovered and returned to him—at Knov’s request, of course. Upon him questioning the man's strangely extensive influence, Knov also admitted to bribing the hospital staff for oversight of the Hunters’ affairs. Kite had begun to expect that level of thoroughness from him at this point.

“So that’s it. When everybody’s made a full recovery, we’re gonna break into the Zoldyck estate, get Killua back for you, and use the Something to free your brain from this trap. Simple, right?”

Gon looked the same.

“And then you’ll be okay,” Kite stated. “If Killua’s by your side, you can be happy again. He’ll be the one to fix you back to normal. And everything will be as it should.”

He spoke with certainty, the picture of success so painfully clear in his mind. Gon, sobbing on Killua’s shoulder. Killua, teary-eyed as he reassured him, holding the boy in his arms. Knov, smiling fondly; Palm, without malicious intent. And Kite…?

“But still, I… I’m sorry that you've had to wait this long. It must be awful, thinking about that thing all the time. Actually, I bet it's so damn boring; you’ve got to have used up every thought you could’ve had about it by now. Treading and re-treading that ground forever.”

“Just hold on a little longer, Gon. Help is on the way.”

But the question kept on pressing down—

“And then what?” he asked of Gon and the world, quiet and resigned, too weary to be desperate. “We all go on our merry way like nothing ever happened? Like Killua wouldn’t have an issue with me hanging around his boyfriend? Like you would want me around to begin with? Everything will be as it should, but… but what does that mean for me?”

 _If you don’t look after him, no one will,_ Bisky had once told him, and he’d believed it with all his heart and soul for every damned day hence. But that wasn’t the case, anymore, was it? Kite was no longer Gon’s only guardian—his final, fraying tie to sanity; Killua and his other friends were about to change all that, both taking his place and eliminating the need for supervision at all.

“I would’ve liked to see you grow up,” Kite weakly confessed. “To see the man you turn into.”

There’d been a voice in his head whispering _too late_ for a while, now.

“But once all this is over and you’re happy again, it’ll probably be goodbye,” he realized. “I know I promised to take you traveling and whatnot, but who are we trying to kid, here? You don’t need me for that. You don’t really need me for anything.”

The simple truth.

“So don't you see how this has to be? It’s not enough for me to wish I had a place by your side. It’s not enough to just… want it, Gon. If I stay with you just to be with you, then that’s where my story has to end. And of course I’d be willing to end it there if that was where you needed it to end, but I… I can’t do it just for me. It can’t be just for me.”

“Please understand, Gon. We call ourselves Hunters, after all. You and I, me and you—Hunter and Hunter.”

Life was an exercise in finding the strength to carry on.

“I think, in one way or another, I’ve broken every promise I’ve ever made to you,” Kite mused, giving in to an inexplicable smile. “Well, let this be the one that I keep: I will bring Killua back to stand before your waking eyes. And then…”

“And then I’ll go on living, I suppose. Keep moving, keep breathing, no matter what.… Yes, I will survive. I can promise you that much, one last time.”

He looked at Gon; Gon looked ahead; and Kite recalled the boy he once knew, running and jumping and looking right back: _Kite, over here! What’s that, Kite? Oh, this is Kite! He’s Ging’s student—really strong. Woah, Kite, that was amazing! For now, I’ll let Kite decide what we should do. I’m weak, Kite; I’m so weak…! Then you’re gonna have to train me, Kite. No, Kite—put me down. H-how could you let her go, Kite? How could you let her w-w-w-walk into that place with… with those things…?! Ah, you must be mistaken, Miss Palm; Kite would never back down from something as important as this! Me and Kite have always been friends. Oi, Kite! Kite? Kite…_

Leaning forward, he cupped the side of Gon's head and slowly, gently kissed the bridge of his nose.

“Thanks for letting me get to know you.”

It wasn’t so hard, turning away. No, it wasn’t so hard. 

 

* * *

 

Eight hundred meters off the ground, the city lights below shone blue against the midnight sky, the background chatter of the cocktail party low and placid in his ears. It was a carefree event for him, now that his work was done. Things would probably get a bit louder once someone stumbles upon the corpse left in the bathroom, but there wasn’t much he could do about that; on small charter blimps such as this, it was nigh impossible to discreetly dispose of a body.

So Illumi continued to stare out the window, nursing a drink he wasn’t able to feel.

“Officially, my parents are still debating on whether or not to kill him, but I suspect that they’ll choose to leave Alluka alive. They think they can always keep him under lock and key, even though Killua’s back, now, and there’s no way we can subdue him forever. But even without Killua to consider, sparing Alluka is still like keeping a bomb in your house just because the fuse isn’t lit—pointlessly dangerous.”

The statement was faithful to his actual beliefs all but for the part about Killu; of course they could subdue him forever.

“So you plan to take matters into your own hands? To… get rid of the bomb?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Getting at Alluka won’t be easy, though, so I’d like for you to help out. It’s in your own best interest, after all; with the way things are looking, there’s a chance you’ll someday end up a sacrifice, as well.”

“My, my,” Hisoka murmured. “That certainly doesn’t sound good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm gonna get a lot of questions: wtf is up with Palm's Hatsu? Well, allow me to explain:  
> PALM'S HATSU AS A HUMAN IS DIFFERENT THAN HER HATSU AS A CHIMERA ANT.
> 
> How do I know this? In literally the first episode that she's introduced, it's implied that her ability can do more than just remotely stalk people; when asked how she knew to call Bisky there, she said that she looked into Gon and Killua's backgrounds "with her power." Later on, she elaborates a little on what that means, saying to Bisky, "I'll let you decide how to train them, since my power told me you would be the answer." And when Palm is finally shown using said power, what we see is this: she asks her creepy mermaid a question (which happens to be about Killua's location), and it gives her an answer.
> 
> Naturally, the ability to just "get answers" is overpowered as fuck, so I gave it some limitations inspired by her Hatsu as a chimera ant. AND THOSE LIMITATIONS ALSO HAPPEN TO JUSTIFY SOME PARTS OF CANON THAT WERE NEVER EXPLAINED—namely, why the fuck she infiltrated the palace in the first place. A pretty good question for her to ask her power would be, "What's the best way to kill the King C. Ant?", so she was trying to sneak a glance at Meruem or a Royal Guard to get their personal opinions on the matter/insight on any of their weaknesses that they might've known of.  
> It also explains a very peculiar line said by Knov during his mental breakdown: "Palm, don't do anything foolish. I managed to place the exits, so even if your mission fails, we can still execute the operation." SOOOO, Palm was trying to data-mine a backup plan to kill Meruem AS AN ALTERNATIVE to a full-on invasion (which was facilitated by Knov getting his portals inside the palace walls).
> 
> TLDR: I'm a huge fucking nerd for obscure hxh trivia


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It physically pains me to refer to Alluka as a boy, but since Illumi's gross mind is all anyone has to go on, I have no choice
> 
> Also, this is the most elaborate thing I've ever written, holy shit. In case it's hard to tell, this chapter consists of two alternating parts:  
> 1.) The duties and musings of a butler named Hishita  
> 2.) A flashback of Knov explaining the plan to kill Illumi and kidnap Alluka+Killua  
> Please read all of it, or you will probably get confused

“So you’re Loli_Lover6969?”

“A representative of his, yes.”

It wasn’t often that fetching the mail involved a lot of travel, since the manor’s PO box was just twenty minutes down the road from the Testing Gate. Indeed, the package in question shouldn’t have been a special case, not truly valuable enough to merit deviation from the standard means of delivery. But this particular business associate, despite having already sold them said package, refused to entrust it to any shipping company and thus required a private convoy. And so Hishita made the trek.

“Representative? Like… an attorney?”

“His butler,” Hishita clarified. “My Master sent me to retrieve the items he purchased from you.”

The man crossed his arms skeptically, the merchandise sitting on the bench beside him. “Well, I wasn’t told about any middleman,” he stated. “You know what’s in this box?”

“It—”

“It’s a limited edition Tomoko-chan body pillow, pal—the model awarded by lottery at the Chairem Anime Twelfth Anniversary Festival—along with a hardcover, jumbo-sized volume of the manga’s unreleased alternate ending. This collection is quite literally one-of-a-kind, _proof_ of my devotion to Tomoko-chan and her beautiful smile. If I weren’t so deep in debt, I would’ve never, _ever_ considered selling any of it.”

Hishita finished sending the text from the phone in his pocket, eyes never leaving his associate. So much trouble for what was essentially a pillow case and comic book.

“So these are some valuable artifacts, capiche? Not your average, ‘oh, I’ll just sell this to make an extra buck,’” he continued to lecture. “Loli_Lover was the guy who won the auction, so unless he tells me otherwise, he’ll be the one to come pick it up. I refuse to accept anything else.”

Right on time, the man’s phone buzzed—hopefully with Master Milluki’s validation of Hishita’s identity.

“… Oh,” the man muttered. “Seems you really are his butler.”

Hishita picked up the box, bowed his head, and said, “Thank you very much,” before making his way back to the helipad.

 

* * *

 

_“Kukuroo Mountain is where we’re going, but first, let’s talk about the stuff in front of it.”_

_“Leading off is the Testing Gate, colloquially known as the Door to Hades, the Zoldycks’ oldest and simplest line of defense. Consisting of seven coaxial double-panel doors with a base weight of four tons, it was built with two purposes in mind: to filter out the weaklings from the family’s challengers and suitors—being considered unworthy of admission if they couldn’t open the door—and to gauge the physical strength of whoever made the cut. Obviously, this is not a covert means of entry.”_

_“After that is the forest behind the Gate, which is divided lengthwise by an old fence. The front part is the realm of two non-hostile groundskeepers and a guard-dog named Mike, one of four Laelapsian wolves that Zigg Zoldyck took back from the Dark Continent. If we enter the forest via any illegitimate route, sneaking past Mike is pretty much impossible, and the same goes for shaking him off our tail. We could probably kill him easy enough, but his absence would be noticed in short order.”_

_“The really tricky part is the other side of the fence, though, because that’s where the butlers come into play. They patrol every square inch every second of the day, and when one of them finds you, they immediately inform the whole damn crew. Airspace is just as intently watched with AEW tech, and they’ve got GPR transmitters everywhere to pick up on tunnelers. Above ground or below, there’s absolutely zero chance of any outsider traversing that forest undetected.”_

_“So what do we do? We skip past all of it.”_

 

* * *

 

“You’re late.”

Hishita placed the box on the countertop. “Yeah, I misjudged what the rain would do to my flight time,” he admitted, stepping into the full-body scanner and raising his arms, waiting patiently to be checked for any suspicious objects or Nen. Aiko simply shook her head at him; even back in his apprentice days, Hishita had never been the best at flying.

“… Okay, you’re clear to enter the facility,” Aiko told him when she finished looking over the readout. “Go take the merchandise to the security lab.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hishita muttered not at all sarcastically. He’d been through this song and dance before.

 

* * *

 

 _“If the only people able to reach the mountain are those whom the family allows to do so, then we just have to catch a ride with one of those people. My Hatsu,_ Hide and Seek, _is perfect for this, since I can set a portal on any flat surface that’s big enough to fit it. All we need is someone to carry it in.”_

_“However, although literal hundreds of people live on the property, there’s actually very little traffic in and out of it. The estate is largely self-sustaining, outfitted with greenhouses and reservoirs and livestock and generators, among other things. It’s a doomsday prepper’s paradise.”_

_“Of course, that’s not to say there’s no traffic at all. Most incomers can be grouped into three major categories: family members returning from outside affairs; clients visiting to hash out a deal; and butlers bringing in the mail and online purchases of their superiors. Obviously, it’s not a safe idea to try to plant something on a Zoldyck or the butlers accompanying them. Clients and their possessions are watched at all times while on the premises, so we can also count them out.”_

_“This leaves us with one reliable option.”_

 

* * *

 

For thirty minutes, Hishita quietly stood by the door to the lab. He was allowed to go inside, of course, but the tests weren’t really much to watch, and there was at least some construction going on outside the hallway window.

“Alright,” Yosuke said once he and his mentor stepped out, comic book and pillow case in hand. “No organisms, viruses, prions, hazardous chemicals, radioactive material, undocumented devices, or unusual Nen. You’re free to deliver this up to the manor, now.”

Hishita obediently took the merchandise. “You don’t have to tell me all the details.”

“Oh,” Yosuke half-laughed, half-sighed—a nervous, little apprentice boy. “Sorry. First day on the job.”

 

* * *

 

_“We can’t use just any object they import, however. It has to be something that’ll end up both inside the manor and in a spot without round-the-clock supervision, which rules out most equipment requested by butlers and all their vehicles. The luxury items of family members, then, are the things we should intercept.”_

_“So which Zoldyck should we mess with? Well, the one who orders stuff most frequently is Milluki, the hikikomori kid of the bunch. Tracking his purchases would’ve been a nightmare, given that he does everything anon and switches proxies all the time, but we’ve got a lucky break right now: Milluki has a history of going after Chairem Anime stuff, and a prominent guy in the community just put up some rare collectibles for auction online. There’s no way he won’t win it.”_

 

* * *

 

“You’re late,” Master Milluki was quick to note, eyes glued to his computer screen.

“My apologies. I—”

“Just leave the stuff on my bed.”

Easier said than done; the bed was all the way over on the opposite wall, blocked by a maze of garbage bags and empty boxes. Of Master Milluki’s chambers, this was his “living” room, where he slept, ate, read, and fiddled around on the internet—basically his whole day. The young Master had forbidden the butlers from ever coming in to clean it, apparently not bothered by the mess. He’d always been touchy about his privacy.

Mindful of this, Hishita found the trail to the bed and set the merchandise on its waiting pile of body pillows. “Is there anything else—”

“No. Get out.”

And so he did.

 

* * *

 

_“So that’s step one of the plan. Step two is identifying the items that can support a portal, which is the cover of the manga book in this situation. Step three is figuring out how the hell to hide it.”_

_“Oh, yeah, Gyo can totally find my portals, and you better believe they’re gonna analyze every available surface before letting anything get within a country mile of the manor. Now, if Nen had been used in the production of the item, its residual aura might’ve been able to camouflage mine, but there’ll be no aura on a machine-assembled book, unfortunately.”_

_“So here’s the best way to go about this: first, we locate and head over to the collector’s house before the auction ends. While he’s away from home, we break in, find the book, and carefully shave off what’s known as the endsheet—a blank page commonly glued to a book’s inside cover. Then, I draw a portal on the exposed canvas and glue the endsheet back over it with a strong adhesive, returning the cover to its original state. When it comes time for the butlers to inspect the book, they won’t want to damage it by ripping the endsheet off, so their Gyo won’t ever see the aura beneath.”_

_“And then that manga volume will be passed along to the depths of Milluki’s room, giving us our way inside.”_

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Hishita lightly tapped his knuckles against the closed door. “Young Master Milluki? The Lady of the house has—”

“Shit, it’s Thursday already?” came the Master’s muffled voice. “Fine, fine. Tell her to hold on for a minute.”

He’d said exactly the same thing at last week’s family dinner, and the Lady had whipped him good after that minute turned into ten, as Hishita recalled. It was strange for him to be repeating his mistake so soon. “I’d recommend against that, sir. She’s not in a patient mood,” he advised.

“Fucking…” The clamor of toppled boxes and heavy footfall. “I really meant a minute, this time!”

“Sir—”

The door swung open, narrowly missing the butler’s face.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Master Milluki hollered as he ran down the hall. Hishita took the liberty of closing the door after him and smoothly followed suit, walking away from the bedroom with no thought as to the things that might’ve been lurking inside.

 

* * *

 

_“Now, this is where Palm’s information starts to really come in handy. The Zoldycks have a mandatory family dinner every Thursday at 18:00, so we can count on Milluki to be out of his room around that time. At 18:15, I’ll spritz a glue-dissolving agent through the portal and push at the endsheet till it unsticks. With that out of the way, I can nudge the book open, poke my head out, and hopefully take the first step behind enemy lines.”_

 

* * *

 

The following morning, it was Hishita’s turn once more to wait on Master Milluki, and he did so with only a touch of caution added to his eternally mild demeanor. Serving the young Master in the early hours was sometimes a difficult experience.

“Sir? I’m here with your breakfast.”

“… Ugh…”

Asleep, probably. He knocked a little harder on the door. “Young Master?”

“Just come in and leave it…”

Hishita did his best to quickly and quietly reach the desk, setting the breakfast tray down and retrieving yesterday’s array of dirty dishes without so much as a clatter. _Goodnight, sir,_ he thought to himself.

 

* * *

 

_“I’ll have to be careful about bumping into things, since Milluki’s main room should be very messy. What would really be a pickle is if the portal’s been moved to a bookcase in the ‘museum’ area—a huge walk-in closet where he stores most of his anime junk. But even in that scenario, I should still be able to thrash around until the book falls off its shelf. He organizes everything alphabetically, thank God, so it’ll be clear how to put it all back.”_

_“And after erasing the portal on the book, I’ll search the room for the dishes and tableware stuff left behind from his lunch. Then, I can draw a new portal on the platter and hop back through before Milluki returns.”_

 

* * *

 

“Jeez,” Yosuke groaned. “I’m still so tired from yesterday…!”

Hishita continued to wash the dishes, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Hasn’t Mira-Sensei taught you not to complain, yet?”

A rhetorical question; of course she had.

“But you said we were allowed to show emotion around other butlers,” Yosuke mumbled, robotically drying every plate and bowl Hishita robotically cleaned. Their designated cupboard was too high for him to reach, so he sat on the countertop beside the sink as he did his half of the work.

“Emotion, yes. But lethargy is different,” Hishita explained. “One thing you are never allowed to display is personal reluctance toward a task.”

The dishes were done. Yosuke was quiet.

“Eventually, you’ll lose the ability to think about yourself,” he said to the little apprentice. “In your own mind, you will become ‘Yosuke’s instrument’ instead of ‘Yosuke.’ ‘What I should be’ instead of ‘what I am.’ That’s what being a butler means.”

“Are you like that, Hishita?”

Hishita’s instrument gave the boy a smile. “No. But I’m trying.”

 

* * *

 

_“Those dishes will inevitably be returned to the nearest kitchen the next day. There should be no one in the area from midnight to four, so that’s when I’ll stick an arm through, feel around, and rearrange stuff as needed to climb out without breaking anything. And then we move on to our next task: dealing with Alluka’s surveillance system.”_

_“The reason I wanted to get out of Milluki’s room is because it’s not connected to the manor’s main ventilation network, which we’re going to use to get behind the locked door of the electrical room. The vents are too small to crawl through, of course, but they’re plenty large enough for the things we wanna put into them. Morel, you can control your smoke directly as long as you can see it, right?”_

_“Yup.”_

_“Great. So you send a cloud out before I erase the portal, and I’ll drop a tiny webcam onto it for you to watch over the smoke from afar. Once the tableware is put back the way it was, I’ll draw another four portals on four thin sheets of plastic brought along with me and then jump back to safety. That’ll be the signal for your smoke to carry the plastic sheets and webcam into the vents.”_

 

* * *

 

“So you’re the one they sent for the next shift?”

“Mhmm. Name’s Hishita,” he introduced, pocketing his keycard and letting the door close behind him. Never before had he worked Master Alluka’s surveillance cameras in this particular time slot, so Hishita was unfamiliar with the butler he’d be replacing. In fact, the only person he knew in here was Aiko, who was already busy staring at her share of the computer screens.

The man stood up from the chair and cracked his neck. “Alright, then. It’s all yours.”

Over the next two hours, the only abnormality would be a short blip in the video on some of the monitors, which could’ve been caused by any number of small things. They nonetheless reported the disturbance, and their supervisor naturally decided that it didn’t merit investigation.

 

* * *

 

_“Even without a map of the vent system, finding the electrical room from the kitchen in question shouldn’t be too hard. When you come across it, push one of the plastic sheets out the vent so I can exit the portal.”_

_“And this time, I’ll bring along this nifty custom PCB made specifically for closed-circuit hacking. It’ll let us cut power to Alluka’s CCTV Control Room without triggering any alarms, which should aid in the process of quietly removing its butlers from the picture.”_

_“So I’ll splice our bit of hardware into the circuit breaker and hide the plastic sheet somewhere in the room—just so we can come back and undo our hacking once all this is over. Then I can open a temporary portal and leave the same way I came.”_

 

* * *

 

“How’s the boy holding up?”

“Still won’t say a word. Still ultra-suspicious of everyone.”

Such a shame, what was happening with Master Killua. His father had lost faith in his ability to manage himself while away from home, so the young Master had been sentenced to remedial survival training for the foreseeable future, with Master Illumi inserting a few more needles to keep him compliant. Hishita frankly had to agree: if nothing else, dying certainly cast doubt on the claim that he’d be fine on his own.

“I suppose not even Master Illumi could make him forget that he’s not supposed to be here right now,” Hishita observed. “It won’t be long before he figures everything out and rips away the needles himself.”

“So what?” Aiko drawled. “Needles or no needles, he won’t be allowed to leave if Master Silva forbids him from leaving. It’s impossible to escape by himself for as long as that’s the Master’s decision.”

Hishita gathered Master Killua’s lunch onto the tray. “I guess that’s true.”

 

* * *

 

_“Next, we begin the preparations for rescuing Killua. He’s being kept in an isolated training facility far on the other side of the manor, so we’ll have to take some travel delay into account when timing this out. The chamber you’re looking for can be identified as such: having seventy square feet with a long table by a four-poster bed, about half a kilometer west of the electrical room and four floors below it. Leave one of the plastic sheets inside the air ducts nearby this room, and I’ll reach out to tape it down for the time being.”_

 

* * *

 

After Master Killua’s meal had been served, Hishita braced himself for the next task at hand, one of far greater import than the daily chores of mail delivery and dish cleaning. Indeed, it was a rare honor to be chosen for a shift of guarding Master Alluka’s personal kitchen; other than the chef who’d cook in it, its guards were the closest that anyone regularly came to the child, seeing as the kitchen was directly above his room.

And so Hishita walked to the security checkpoint set up around the entrance to Alluka’s facility. After being cleared for access, he made his way through the long, empty hall that led to the elevator, aware of the cameras watching his every move. He entered the correct code into the panel beside the elevator door, pressed his thumb to the fingerprint scanner, and walked inside when the door finally opened.

_“Hishita Sato, full-licensed butler of first, ninth, and twelfth degree. Security admits him for guard duty on floor negative one at 14:10, April nineteenth of the year twenty-eighteen.”_

_“This is butler Charmaine O’Hannigan on floor negative one, permitting Hishita to come down and replace me at 14:11, April nineteenth of the year twenty-eighteen.”_

Voice confirmations received, the elevator began its silent descent. Charmaine was there to hand him her alarm button and radio transceiver at the bottom, and they traded places about the elevator.

_“Charmaine O’Hannigan, full-licensed butler of first, ninth, and twelfth degree. Security dismisses her from guard duty on floor negative one at 14:16, April nineteenth of the year twenty-eighteen.”_

“This is butler Hishita Sato on floor negative one, permitting Charmaine to be replaced by me at 14:16, April nineteenth of the year twenty-eighteen.”

The elevator door closed once again, and Hishita turned around to look upon the mysterious floor negative one: a poorly lit, dungeon-esque corridor with a modern kitchen at the end of it, every modicum of open space watched by surveillance cameras. To his right was the staircase that led down to floor negative two, where Master Alluka was actually held.

He walked to the kitchen door and took his place by the woman already there, making a mental note to expect her eventual exchange with whoever succeeds her; the shifts of the two butlers posted down here were staggered so the floor was never without a guard. For the next twelve hours, he kept diligent watch over everything—the area, his partners, the chef that periodically came and went.

Nothing happened, of course.

 

* * *

 

_“Okay, now here comes the hard part. Getting at Alluka means descending fourteen hundred meters beneath the mountain surface—to the lowest level of the Zoldycks’ ant hill of a manor—and lemme tell you, that is not an easy thing for humble kidnappers like ourselves to accomplish.”_

_“The obstacles begin with the security checkpoint, where every incoming person gets frisked, interrogated, background-checked, ect. If you pass all the tests, you’re admitted into the Entrance Hallway, which is nothing more than a three hundred meter walk deeper into the mountain. It’s both the first of the areas watched by surveillance cameras and the last of those with vents we can access.”_

_“At the end of the Hallway lies an elevator door. Opening it requires authorized fingerprint identifications alongside a five-digit code changed every four hours, and then the elevator won’t move without vocal confirmations from both the guards below and the security checkpoint butlers looking on through the cameras. Furthermore, the elevator shaft is rigged with motion detectors, so we can’t manually override the lift or cut a hole in the bottom to drop ourselves through.”_

_“After that is a peaceful, five-minute ride down to floor negative one: an intermediary level comprised of another hall and Alluka’s personal kitchen. Other than the surveillance cameras, the only things to worry about on this floor are two guards armed with wireless alarm buttons and radio transceivers. If everything’s cool with them, they’ll let you walk down the stairway to floor negative two, where you can finally, finally pay Alluka a visit—just so long as you have the passcodes to four more titanium doors and the most elaborate vault lock known to man.”_

_“Haha, yeah… we’re not doing that.”_

 

* * *

 

“This is butler Hishita Sato on floor negative one, permitting Sora to come down and replace me at 02:13, April twentieth of the year twenty-eighteen.”

Five minutes later, Sora emerged from the elevator to take over the next shift, and Hishita readily handed him the alarm button and transceiver before taking his place.

 

* * *

 

_“What I’ll have you do, Morel, is hold the plastic sheets in the vent outside Alluka’s CCTV Control Room. When I give the word, hide one under the cushion of a chair—there should be a few right around the corner—and carry the remaining sheet forty meters west to the vent of the Entrance Hallway. And this next part is gonna require a lot of skill, patience, and careful preparation.”_

_“You see, the butlers on the surveillance cameras will notice your smoke if you just haphazardly move it into the open, which is an instant Game Over for us. We have only one way around this: changing the hue, saturation, and brightness of the smoke to match that of whatever surface or object it blocks sight of, disguising it as the Hallway itself. If done perfectly, there won’t be any visible change to the Hall when the smoke emerges, and then you can very, very slowly move everything toward the elevator door, continuously adjusting the smoke’s appearance along the way. We’ll run some simulations on a duplicate hallway to both practice the technique and estimate how long it should take.”_

_“Then, sometime around two in the morning, a butler will walk by to replace one of the guards on floor negative one. As they open the elevator, move the smoke in alongside them as discreetly as possible, holding the plastic sheet right over their head. I’ll jump out the portal by Alluka’s CCTV Control Room and crouch outside the door. And the moment that voice confirmations are received and the elevator begins to move, several things will happen in quick succession.”_

_“Number one: I simultaneously cut power to the Control Room and slide the plastic sheet under the door.”_

_“Number two: Kite jumps out the portal on that plastic sheet and quickly knocks out the butlers in said Control Room, taking advantage of the sudden plunge into darkness and non-operational intercoms. We’ll have you practice this plenty in advance, of course.”_

_“Number three: I return to my Nen space through a temporary portal and immediately exit the one I slid under the door. After we tie up and gag all the unconscious butlers, I let Kite through the portal on the plastic sheet, return power to the room, and leave via another another temporary portal.”_

_“Number four: Now that nobody’s watching the elevator surveillance cameras, Morel uses his smoke to destroy those cameras and exits the portal held above the butler’s head. Then you’ve got three-to-four minutes to knock out the butler and create a smoke clone in their image.”_

_“Number five: I enter the elevator one minute before it stops, opening a portal for you to take the unconscious butler along with any extra smoke. While inside, you should tie up, blindfold, and gag the butler.”_

_“Number six: I open up the smoke clone’s shirt, tape the plastic sheet to the side of its waist, and replace its bolo tie with a duplicate—one that I’ll arrange to hold a hidden camera. Then, pocketing the old webcam, I fix the clone’s appearance and exit through a temporary portal.”_

_“Number seven: The smoke clone gets off the elevator and takes the alarm button plus transceiver from the departing butler. I return to the Control Room, and the smoke clone and I give the voice confirmations to get the elevator moving, keeping the butler inside oblivious.”_

_“Number eight: The smoke clone takes its place beside the other guard. From within the Nen space, Kite then points a gun at the clone’s portal—we’ll get you an uzi or something—takes aim using the webcam, and opens fire on the other guard’s hands. Your goal here is to destroy the alarm button and radio transceiver, so don’t stop shooting until both are in pieces. Oh, and you should also take out the six surveillance cameras that the clone is in view of.”_

_“And finally, number nine: While the guard is trying to figure out what the fuck just happened, Morel dismisses the clone, and Kite pops out of the portal under the cover of smoke to knock the other guard out. I then come through to help tie the guy up and bandage any bullet-wounds before letting you, the smoke, and webcam back through the portal.”_

_“If all goes well, no news of any intruder should spread.”_

 

* * *

 

> Intruder(1) attacking at restricted sector 2J-ASC  
>  All nearby butlers report to scene; find and apprehend any/all suspect persons (status: capture alive)

Eyes nearly popping out of his head, Hishita dropped his phone and ran for the door.

 

* * *

 

_“This should leave me in the middle of floor negative one, alone but for an unconscious guard, with all the hallway surveillance cameras both unmanned and unable to record any footage of me for future observation. And all of this was done for one purpose only: to set foot in Alluka’s personal kitchen.”_

_“There are two reasons why his kitchen is almost as well-guarded as his room. The first is to make it difficult for any family member to poison him, and the second is to prevent their misuse of kitchen’s dumbwaiter—sending a bomb down instead of breakfast, for example. As one of his few points of interaction with the outside world, Alluka’s meal system is a primary target for anyone trying to reach him.”_

_“So I’ll crack open the kitchen door and gun down all the remaining cameras before stepping inside. The dumbwaiter, unlike the door, requires another code to open, which is why I’ll bring some small IEDs with me to take off the hatch without damaging the dumbwaiter itself. Then I’ll put the clone’s plastic sheet in the dumbwaiter and send it down to Alluka’s room.”_

_“The rest, you can probably extrapolate on your own—me climbing out of the dumbwaiter and pushing Alluka into a portal; grabbing the butler taken from the elevator and throwing them out into Alluka’s room; going back to erase all the permanent portals so my Nen can’t be tracked; removing our PCB from the electrical room; taking all the plastic sheets back through temporary portals.”_

_“Oh, except for the one we left by Killua. Once Project Kidnap Alluka is complete, Morel can send a bit of smoke out the portal in question and use it to push the plastic sheet out of the vent. Since Kite is the only one of us whom Killua knows, he’ll be the one to exit the portal, explain everything, and smuggle him into my Nen space.”_

_“All that should be left at this point is Project Murder Illumi. We know that he plans to visit Killua at 06:00 of the soonest day we can implement all this, so here’s what we do: Morel creates a smoke clone of Killua and poses it over the plastic sheet until Illumi enters the room. When he does so, I open the portal for Kite to pull the smoke clone through, making it look as though Illumi walked in on us rescuing him. Palm says that Illumi would chase after the clone in this scenario, so we can count on this to lure him into my Nen space.”_

_“And as soon as we’re inside, I’ll promptly take Kite and myself through a different portal, leaving Illumi alone in a room with Morel. The rest is up to you.”_

 

* * *

 

But as he turned the corner to approach Alluka’s CCTV Control Room, what Hishita came upon was not the unfamiliar face of some foreign invader, but a man whom all the butlers had recently added to their list of Masters.

Hisoka Zoldyck, fiance to Illumi and the newest member of the family.

 

* * *

 

_“Of course, there’s one other huge variable for us to address—our scheduling. The last two questions Palm asked were, ‘What’s the best time frame for us to enact the plan?’ and ‘Why is that the best time?’ And the answers were as follows: ‘Anytime before thirteen days from now,’ and ‘Because that’s when Alluka will die.’”_

_Knov took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair._

_“We were cocky, thinking we’d have forever to prepare,” he muttered. “As you all know, these past few weeks of non-stop questions have been very hard on Palm. She probably won’t have the Nen to ask anything else before our time runs out. So we don’t know why Alluka’s being executed or how they’re going to do it—just that it’ll happen in thirteen days.”_

_Kite’s eyes darkened as he connected the dots, receiving a short nod from Knov. “Problem: thirteen days from now is the soonest possible date we can reach the final phase of the plan, so we have absolutely no room for error. What’s our best option, then? To immediately get to work and hope they schedule Alluka’s death for sometime after we steal him, since the final phase of the plan should occur around two in the morning. I mean, if they can kill him at any time, then what’s the rush? It seems a bit strange to arrange it at literally the first hour of the day.”_

_“It seems a bit strange to wait thirteen days instead of just doing it now,” Morel pointed out. “If they can kill him at any time, that is.”_

_“Very true… Then maybe this ‘kill Alluka’ faction isn’t large enough to do as it pleases. You think Illumi’s part of a secret plot?”_

_“It’s possible.”_

_Knov rubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses. “If that’s the case, then the chosen date is probably just the next time Silva and Zeno are away from the manor,” he speculated. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to deal with complications as they arise. Don’t do anything reckless, everyone.”_

_Just in case it needed to be said._

_“Naturally, all of this should be done wearing gloves, hats, masks, and new shoes—because I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hunted by the world’s most powerful family of assassins. Let them think this was done by an enemy of the family; leave no trace of yourself for them to find. And Kite, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to cut your hair. It’s too much of a liability.”_

_“I don’t care,” Kite defensively averred._

_“Alright, alright. And should I ever be spotted and/or caught, immediately get yourselves, Palm, and Gon out of town. I mean, I would never sell you guys out, but it won’t take much for them to link me to the four of you.”_

 

* * *

 

It was a good plan, to be sure. Everything was going smoothly. Everything was feeling alright.

But as he turned the corner to approach Alluka’s CCTV Control Room, what Knov didn’t foresee blocking his way was Hisoka Zoldyck, a lot of blood, and the corpse of an unimportant butler named Hishita.


End file.
